IC-NRLF 


GIFT   OF 

L   MISS   L.T.  vv 


SCHOOL-DAYS 


OP 


EMINENT  ME1ST 


i. 

SKETCHES    OF    THE    PROGRESS    OF   EDUCATION    IN    ENGLAND, 

FROM    THE    REIGN    OF    KING    ALFRED    TO    THAT    OF 

QUEEN    VICTORIA. 

II. 

EARLY   LIVES    OF    CELEBRATED    BRITISH    AUTHORS,    PHILOSO 
PHERS    AND    POETS,    INVENTORS    AND    DISCOVERERS, 
DIVINES,   HEROES,    STATESMEN    AND 
LEGISLATORS. 


BY 

JOHN    TIMBS,    F.S.A., 

AUTHOR  OF  ':  00BIOSITIK3  OF  LONDON,"   "THINGS  NOT  OSNKEAU.T  KNOWN,"  ETO. 


FBOM  THE   LOiSDOtf   EDITION. 


COLUMBUS: 
FOLLETT,   FOSTER  AND   COMPANY 

M  DCCC  LX. 


• 


rOT,LETT.  FOSTER  &  CO., 

Printers,  Stfrfotypfrs,  EinJtrt 

and  Publishers, 

COLUMBUS,    OHIO. 


TO  THE  HEADER. 


To  our  admiration  of  true  greatness  naturally  succeeds  some  curiosity  aa 
to  the  means  by  which  such  distinction  has  been  attained.  The  subject  of 
"  the  School-days  of  Eminent  Persons,"  therefore,  promises  an  abundance 
of  striking  incident,  in  the  early  buddings  of  genius,  and  formation  of 
character,  through  which  may  be  gained  glimpses  of  many  of  the  hidden 
thoughts  and  secret  springs  by  which  master-minds  have  moved  the  world. 

The  design  of  the  present  volume  may  be  considered  an  ambitious  one 
to  be  attempted  within  so  limited  a  compass ;  but  I  felt  the  incontestible 
facility  of  producing  a  book  brimful  of  noble  examples  of  human  action 
and  well-directed  energy,  more  especially  as  I  proposed  to  gather  my 
materials  from  among  the  records  of  a  country  whose  cultivated  people 
have  advanced  civilization  far  beyond  the  triumphs  of  any  nation,  an 
cient  or  modern.  In  other  words,  I  resolved  to  restrict  my  design  to 
BRITISH  WORTHIES. 

I  had  no  sooner  sketched  the  outline  of  my  plan  than  the  materials 
crowded  upon  me  with  an  excess  "  whose  very  indices  are  not  to  be  read 
over  in  an  age."  I  then  resolved  to  condense  and  select  from  the  long 
line  of  Educated  Worthies,  rather  than  attempt  to  crowd  the  legion  into  a 
few  hundred  pages.  Thus  additional  interest  was  gained ;  for  the  smaller 
the  charmed  circle  of  light,  the  more  intensely  will  it  point  upon  the  reader. 

The  present  volume  is  divided  into  two  Sections.  The  first  is  historical 
as  well  as  biographical :  it  sketches  the  PROGRESS  OF  EDUCATION,  com 
mencing  with  the  dark  age  of  our  history,  when  knowledge  was  wrapt  in 
the  gloom  and  mysticism  of  the  Druidical  grove  ;  and  thence  the  narrative 
travels  onward  and  upward  to  the  universal  teachings  of  the  present  time. 
In  this  section  are  portrayed  the  Education  of  each  Sovereign,  his  early  habits 
and  tustes,  which  often  exercised  powerful  influence  upon  the  people.  In 
each  reign  I  have  described  the  foundation  of  the  great  Schools,  and 
sketched  the  Educational  customs  of  the  period.  The  teaching  of  its  illus 
trious  men  is  also  incidentally  recorded ;  and  wherever  such  men  have 
proved  benefactors  by  the  proposition  or  establishment  of  special  Schools 
or  Systems  of  Education,  their  lives  and  plans  are  narrated  with  fuller 

248279 


iv  To  the  Reader. 

detail.  How  fraught  with  pious  memories  and  hallowed  associations  are 
those  great  institutions  of  this  great  country— her  Public  Schools!  How 
consecrated  are  their  localities— how  illuminated  by  the  bright  lights  of 
centuries— whether  around  an  ancient  college  nestling  at  the  hill-foot—fit 
home  for  the  tender  young — as  at  Winchester ;  whether  amid  picturesque 
spires  and  towers,  as  in  "  the  watery  glade  "  of  Eton  ;  or  in  the  kindred 
regal  munificence  of  Christ's  Hospital  and  Westminster — in  the  olden  clois 
ter  and  cell  peopled  with  busy  sons  of  learning,  and  earnest  expounders 
of  the  Reformed  Faith  ;  or  where  citizenship  and  philanthropy  have  kept 
pace  with  kingly  dispensation,  raising  within  many  a  city,  town,  and  hamlet, 
homes  for  the  orphan  and  friendless— where  the  good  seed  might  be  sown, 
and  the  tiny  child  trained  up  in  the  way  he  should  go. 

Each  of  these  foundations  has  its  history,  relics  of  its  celebrated  sons, 
and  fond  memorials  of  their  worth.  For  centuries  after  the  victory  of 
Agincourt,  were  shown  the  rooms  in  which  was  reared  Henry  V.  at  Ox 
ford  ;  to  this  day,  Dryden's  autograph  in  wood  is  preserved  at  Westmins 
ter  ;  and  with  each  returning  summer  is  renewed  the  leafy  shade  beneath 
which  Addison  loved  to  meditate  at  Magdalene. 

Among  the  incidental  varieties  of  this  Section  are  the  descriptions  of 
the  changes  in  manners  and  customs,  the  old  usages  and  quaint  forms,  cere 
monies  and  observances,  of  a  more  picturesque  age  than  the  present. 

Nor,  in  journeying  through  these  bye-ways  of  local  history  have  I  passed 
by  those  ancient  seats  of  learning  where  the  solemn  church,  the  stately 
hall,  and  the  embellished  depositories  of  the  wisdom  of  past  ages,  have 
been  reared  with  pious  feeling,  and  endowed  by  the  gratitude  of  those  who 
became,  walking  in  the  paths  of  duty  and  honor,  rich  in  this  world's  wealth. 
How  much  of  England's  greatness  has  been  nurtured  in  these  magnificent 
seats  of  academic  glory,  and  matured  amidst  the  congenial  repose  of  their 
groves  and  gardens ! 

The  Second  Section  of  the  work  is  devoted  to  ANECDOTE  BIOGKAFIIIKK, 
or  sketches  of  the  early  lives — the  School  and  College  Days — of  Eminent 
Men  who,  by  their  genius,  learning,  and  character,  have  shed  luster  upon 
their  name  and  country.  In  these  brief  memoirs  I  have  recorded  the  inci 
dents  of  their  birth,  boyhood,  and  education,  until  they  have  entered  upon 
the  world-wide  field  of  action. 

That  by  narrating  the  circumstances  under  which  these  Eminent  Men 
have  severally  reached  their  excellence— that  the  number  and  variety  of 
suggestive  points  in  this  volume  may  exercise  a  beneficial  influence,  and 
not  only  interest  the  reader,  but  induce  him  to  emulate  their  examples,— 
IB  the  sincere  wish  of  THE  AUTHOR. 


CONTENTS. 


PROGRESS  OF  EDUCATION. 

FAGS 

Education  of  the  Early  Britons 1 

Schools  of  the  Druids 2 

The  Roman-British  Schools 3 

Introduction  of  Writing 3 

Education  of  the  Clergy 4 

Canterbury  and  other  Monastic  Schools  in  the  Seventh  Century 6 

Rise  of  Anglo-Saxon  Schools 6 

The  Schools  of  Alfred 7 

St.  Dunstan,  the  Scholar  of  Glastonbury 10 

King  Canute  a  Poet 11 

The  Earliest  Books 11 

The  Saxon  Language. — Formation  of  the  English  Language 12 

Education  of  William  the  Conqueror , 15 

Lanfranc.— Ingulphus  and  the  Schools  of  Croyland. 15 

William  II.— Henry  I.— Stephen 18 

Henry  II. — His  love  of  Letters. — Sports  of  the  London  Scholars 19 

Rise  of  Anglo-Norman  Schools 21 

Richard  I.,  the  Poet  King 22 

Church  Schools.— Benefit  of  Clergy 22 

Rise  of  Universities 23 

Troubled  Reign  of  King  John 25 

Henry  III. — Settlement  of  the  English  Language 26 

Roger  Bacon  an  Educational  Reformer 26 

Edward  II. — Schools  in  his  Reign 27 

Edward  III.— His  Accomplishments 28 

Schools  in  the  Age  of  Chaucer 29 

Scholarship  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince 30 

Winchester  College  founded  by  William  of  Wykeham 31 

Wickliffe  Translates  the  Bible 33 

Education  of  Richard  II. — His  Patronage  of  Gower 35 

Henry  IV. — His  Accomplishments 36 

Henry  V.  at  Queen's  College,  Oxford 36 

Early  Parochial  Schools. — Schools  in  Churches 38 

Education  at  Home. — Music 39 

Childhood  and  Youth  of  Henry  VI 41 

Henry  VI.  founds  Eton  College,  and  King's  College,  Cambridge 42 

John  Carpenter  and  the  City  of  London  School 47 

Mercer's  School.— The  First  Grammar  School.  .• 48 

Saint  Paul's  School  founded 48 

Edward  IV.  and  his  Tutors 60 

Costliness  of  Manuscript  Books , 51 


vi  Contents. 

PAGI 

Bdward  V.  in  Lucllow  Castle 62 

Introduction  of  Printing 53 

Early  Printed  Books 53 

Childhood  and  Education  of  Richard  III 54 

Troubled  Boyhood  of  Henry  VII 56 

An  Eminent  Grammarian  and  Poet  Laureate 59 

Early  Life  and  Character  of  Henry  VIII 60 

Ill-educated  Nobility ". 61 

The  School  of  Sir  Thomas  More 62 

Wolsey,  Latimer,  and  Cranmer 64 

Boyhood  and  Learning  of  Edward  VI 65 

Edward  VI.  founds  Christ's  Hospital 68 

King    Edward's  Schools  at   Birmingham,    Lichfield,  Tunbridge  and 

Bedford 72 

Education  and  Reign  of  Queen  Mary 75 

Education  of  Queen  Elizabeth 76 

Roger'  Ascham — His  "Schoolmaster" 77 

Lady  Jane  Grey  and  her  Schoolmaster 78 

Sir  Anthony  Cook  and  his  four  Learned  Daughters 79 

A  Truant  punished  in  the  16th  Century 80 

Flogging  in  Schools 81 

Westminster  College  School  founded 81 

A  Poor  Westminster  Scholar 85 

Merchant  Taylors'  School  founded 86 

Gresham  College  founded 88 

Statesmen,  Poets,  and  Dramatists  of  Elizabeth's  Reign 88 

Rugby  School  founded 90 

Harrow  School  founded 93 

Education  of  James  I  95 

Education  of  Prince  Henry 97 

Literature  of  the  Reign  of  James  1 99 

Burton  and  Selden 100 

Thomas  Fuller's  «•  Schoolmaster  " 101 

Charter-house  School  founded 1 02 

Education  of  Charles  1 104 

Literature  and  Learning  at  the  Accession  of  Charles  1 106 

A  Good  Education  in  the  Seventeenth  Century 108 

Sir  Matthew  Half's  Plan  of  Instruction 109 

Newspapers  introduced 110 

Milton's  System  of  Instruction Ill 

Locke's  System  of  Education 113 

Grammar-Schools  in  the  Seventeenth  Century 115 

Influence  of  the  Writings  of  Lord  Bacon 115 

The  First  Scientific  Treatises  in  English 117 

Invention  of  Logarithms.— Napier's  Bones—  Gunters  Scale 117 

The  Sciences  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge 118 

Boyhood  and  Education  of  Oliver  Cromwell 120 

Charles  II.— His  Patronage  of  Letters 121 

Nonconformist  Schools  at  Islington  and  Newington  Green 123 

Boyhood  of  James  II 124 

Literature  of  the  Seventeenth  Century 125 

Rise  of  Free  Schools  or  Charity-Schools 126 

Education  of  William  III 1 

The  Reign  of  Queen  Anne— The  Augustan  Age  of  Literature 132 

Reigns  of  George  I.  and  George  II 134 


Contents.  vii 

P.'GK 

Education  of  George  III 135 

Sunday  Schools  established 138 

The  Monitorial  System  of  Bell  and  Lancaster 139 

The  Primer  and  the  Hornbook    140 

Progress  of  Education  in  the  Reigns  of  George  IV.  and  William  IV.. .  144 

ANECDOTE  BIOGRAPHIES. 

Early  Fortunes  of  William  of  Wykeham 149 

William  Caxton,  the  First  English  Printer 150 

Boyhood  and  Rise  of  Sir  Thomas  More 151 

The  Poets  Wyatt  and  Surrey 152 

Lord  Burleigh  at  Cambridge 153 

Camden's  Schools 155 

Sir  Edward  Coke's  Legal  Studies 156 

Spenser  at  Cambridge 157 

Richard  Hooker  at  Heavitree 157 

Sir  Philip  Sidney—"  the  English  Petrarch. " 158 

Boyhood  of  Lord  Bacon 160 

The  Admirable  Crichton 161 

How  George  Abbot,  the  Clothweaver's  son,  became  Archbishop  of  Can 
terbury  163 

Shakspeare  at  Stratford-on-Avon 164 

Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  in  Shropshire 165 

Admiral  Blake  at  Bridgwater 166 

Waller's  Dullness 166 

Dr.  Busby,  head-master  of  Westminster  School 167 

Lord  Clarendon's  Studies 169 

Sir  Matthew  Hale's  Early  Life 170 

Samuel  Butler  at  Worcester 171 

Jeremy  Taylor  at  Cambridge 172 

Cowley  at  Westminster 172 

John  Evelyn  at  Eton  and  Oxford 173 

Marvell's  Scholarship 175 

John  Aubrey  in  Wiltshire 175 

The  Hon.  Robert  Boyle,  a  true  Patron  and  Cultivator  of  Science 176 

John  Bunyan,  author  of  "  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  " 177 

Isaac  Barrow  at  the  Charter-house 179 

Dryden  at  Westminster  and  Oxford 180 

Philip  Henry  at  Westminster 182 

Sir  Christopher  Wren  at  Westminster  and  Oxford 182 

Dr.  South  at  Westminster 184 

Bishop  Ken  at  Winchester 185 

Sir  Dudley  North— How  he  made  up  for  his  Dullness  at  School 188 

•  Newton  at  Grantham  and  Cambridge 190 

AVilliam  Penn  at  Oxford  192 

The  Great  Duke  of  Marlborough  at  St.  Paul's  School 194 

Matthew  Prior  at  Westminster 195 

Addison  at  Lichfield,  Charter-house,  and  Oxford 196 

Dr.  Isaac  Watts— His  Schools  and  Educational  Works 197 

Pope's  Schools  and  Self-tuition 198 

John  Gay  at  Barnstaple 202 

How  Edmund  Stone  taught  himself  Mathematics 202 

John  Wesley  at  the  Charter-house  and  Oxford 203 

Lord  Mansfield  at  Westminster. .  .206 


viii  Contents. 

PAOI 

Lord  Chatham  at  Eton  and  Oxford 207 

Dr.  Johnson  at  Lichfield,  Stourbridge,  and  Oxford 207 

How  James  Ferguson  taught  himself  the  Classics  and  Astronomy. ...   212 

Lord  Camden  at  Eton  and  Cambridge 213 

Shenstone's  "  Schoolmistress  " 213 

Gray  at  Eton  and  Cambridge 215 

How  Brindley  taught  himself  the  Rudiments  of  Mathematics 217 

William  Collins  at  Winchester  and  Oxford 218 

Lord  Clive— His  Daring  Boyhood 220 

Captain  Cook's  Education  on  board  Ship 221 

John  Hunter's  Want  of  Education 222 

Edmund  Burke  at  Bullitore  and  Dublin 223 

Cowper  at  Market-street  and  Westminster 226 

Warren  Hastings  at  Westminster 228 

Gibbon,  the  Historian— His  Schools  and  Plan  of  Study 229 

Archdeacon  Paley  at  Cambridge 230 

Sir  Joseph  Banks  at  Eton 231 

Sir  William  Jones  at  Harrow 232 

How  Dr.  Parr  became  a  Parson  instead  of  a  Surgeon 231 

Lords  Eldon  and  Stowell  at  Newcastle  and  Oxford 236 

The  Two  Brothers  Milner 238 

How  William  Gifford  became  a  Scholar  and  Critic 239 

Lord  Nelson's  Schools  in  Norfolk 240 

Robert  Burns,  "  the  Ayrshire  Plowman  " 243 

Richard  Person,  "  the  Norfolk  Boy,"  at  Happesburgh,  Eton,  and  Cam 
bridge  246 

The  Marquis  Wellesley  at  Eton  and  Oxford 250 

Lord  Chief-Justice  Tenterden  at  Canterbury  and  Oxford 252 

How  Robert  Bloomfield  wrote  his  "  Farmer's  Boy "  in  the  heart  of 

London 253 

Precocity  of  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence 2 .">  1 

The  Duke  of  Wellington's  Schools 256 

George  Canning  at  Eton  and  Oxford 260 

Sir  Walter  Scott  — His  Schools  and  Readings 262 

Lord  Hill,  the  Waterloo  Hero 267 

Coleridge  at  Christ's  Hospital  and  Cambridge 269 

Robert  Southey  at  his  Schools,  and  at  Oxford 271 

Charles  Lamb  at  Christ's  Hospital 274 

Sir  Humphry  Davy  at  Penzance— His  Schools  and  Self-education 277 

George  Stephenson,  the  Railway  Engineer — His  Schoolmasters  and 

Self-tuition 281 

(Note— James  Watt) 283 

Boyhood  and  Early  Death  of  Henry  Kirke  White 285 

Sir  Robert  Peel  at  Harrow  and  Oxford 288 

Lord  Byron  at  Aberdeen,  Harrow,  and  Cambridge 290 

Dr.  Thomas* Arnold  at  Winchester  and  Oxford. . . : 293 

Sir  Henry  Havelock  at  the  Charter-house 295 

APPKNDIX  :  University  Honors  —  Tripos 301,  302 

St.  Paul's  School  founded , 302 


SCHOOL-DAYS  OF  EMINENT  MEN, 


of  Mutation. 


EDUCATION    OF    THE    EARLY   BRITONS. 

TO  trace  the  modes  of  teaching  which  were  practiced  among 
a  rude  people  inhabiting  caves,  or  at  best,  houses  built  of 
stakes  and  wattles,  in  forest  glades,  has  been  an  inquiry  attended 
with  slight  results.  Such  a  people  inhabited  Britain ;  and  all  that 
we  can  gather  amid  the  glimmerings  of  the  earliest  history  of 
its  aborigines  is,  that  skill  in  certain  field  sports,  healthful  pas 
times,  and  domestic  amusements,  formed  the  only  approach  to 
education  which  the  youth  received  from  their  parents.  They 
knew  not  how  to  read — indeed,  they  held  it  dishonorable  to 
learn — but  they  sung  and  danced  to  music,  and  learned  hymns 
by  heart. 

The  early  British  games  consisted  in  lifting  up  great  weights, 
running,  leaping,  swimming,  wrestling,  and  riding;  and  it  is 
supposed,  charioteering,  or  the  skillful  driving  and  management 
of  carriages.  The  other  pastimes  were  playing  with  the  sword, 
and  buckler,  and  spear ;  coursing,  fishing,  and  fowling ;  poetical 
composition ;  playing  on,  and  singing  to,  the  harp,  etc. 

Herodian  mentions  iron  girdles  as  used  by  the  Britons  for 
keeping  the  bellies  of  the  youth  within  its  size :  this  they  were 
also  to  effect  by  fasting,  running,  riding,  and  swimming;  all 
which  Giraldus  mentions  of  the  Welsh  and  Irish.  We  discover 
no  traces  of  the  use  of  letters  among  the  Britons  previous  to 
their  subjugation  by  the  Romans,  and  their  subsequent  inter 
course  with  that  extraordinary  people ;  for  although  alphabets 
have  been  produced  and  attributed  to  them,  yet  the  display  of 
these  alphabets  has  been  neither  accompanied,  nor  their  exist 
ence  confirmed,  by  the  exhibition  of  a  single  manuscript. 


School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


SCHOOLS    OF    THE    DRUIDS. 

The  native  place  and  stronghold  of  Druidism  was  Britain. 
The  Druids  were  the  Priests  of  the  Ancient  Britons ;  and  the 
picture  which  Caesar  has  drawn  of  the  Druidical  sacrifices  of 
burning  men  alive  in  huge  images  of  wickerwork,  leaves  upon 
childhood  a  terrific  impression  of  their  cruelties  ;  whilst  the  ex 
istence  of  Stonehenge  and  other  worship-temples  attributed  to 
the  Druids,  indicates  the  vast  power  of  these  "  ministers  of 
sacred  things."  But  this  was  a  power  founded  in  the  exclusive 
possession  of  knowledge.  Accordingly,  they  were  the  deposito 
ries  of  whatever  learning  existed  in  the  country ;  and  they  are 
stated  to  have  hail  numerous  schools,  where  they  taught  "many 
things  respecting  the  stars  and  their  motion,  respecting  the  ex 
tent  of  the  world  and  of  our  earth,  respecting  the  nature  of 
things,  and  respecting  the  power  and  the  majesty  of  the  im 
mortal  gods."  These  doctrines  were  supposed  to  have  origi 
nated  in  Britain ;  and  in  Caesar's  time  those  Gauls  who  wished 
to  study  them,  visited  our  island  for  that  purpose. 

The  leading  maxim  which  the  Druids  gave  to  the  people  was 
well  calculated  to  maintain  their  power;  for  they  taught  that  the 
fertility  of  the  fields  depended  upon  the  riches  of  themselves. 
Amongst  other  rites,  they  cut  the  mistletoe,  with  a  sickle  of  pure 
gold,  upon  the  sixth  day  of  the  moon ;  and,  in  all  probability, 
this  is  the  origin  of  hanging  the  mistletoe  in  our  houses  at  Christ 
mas.  The  oak  is  also  said  to  have  been  venerated  amongst  the 
Druids,  and  it  is  the  figurative  as  well  as  the  real  monarch  of  our 
forests  to  this  day ;  but,  beyond  a  few  particulars  preserved  by 
Greek  and  Roman  writers,  we  know  little  or  nothing  concerning 
the  tenets  of  the  Druids.  "  Their  doctrines,"  says  Sir  F.  Pal- 
grave,  "  were  not  reduced  into  writing,  but  preserved  by  oral 
tradition  ;  and  when  the  Druidical  priesthood  was  extinguished, 
their  lore  was  lost,  excepting  the  few  passages  which  may  be 
collected  from  the  compositions  of  the  British  Bards,  and  the 
proverbial  triads  (hymns)  of  the  Cymri." 

The  Druids  were  the  only  physicians,  and  blended  some  knowledge  of  natural  medi 
cines  with  the  general  superstitions  by  which  they  were  characterized.  Certain  herbs 
formed  the  chief  of  their  medicines.  Their  famous  Mistletoe,  or  all-heal,  was  consid 
ered  as  a  certain  cure  in  many  disease-*,  an  antidote  to  poison,  and  a  sure  remedy 
against  infection.  (A  nostrum  called  Hta1-aU  is  compounded  at  this  day.)  Another 
plant,  called  Pamoclus,  or  Marchwort.  which  grew  in  damp  places,  wa*  believed  to  pre 
serve  the  health  of  swine  and  oxen,  when  it  had  been  bruised  and  put  in  their  water- 
trough*.  But  it  was  required  to  be  gathered  fasting,  with  the  left  hand,  without  look 
ing  back  when  it  was  being  plucked.  A  kind  of  hedge  hyssop  called  Selago,  was 
esteemed  to  he  a  general  charm  ami  preservation  from  sudden  accidents  and  misfor 
tunes  ;  and  it  was  to  be  gathered  with  nearly  the  same  ceremonies  as  the  mistletoe. 
To  these  might  be  added  Vervain,  the  herb  UritannicH,  which  was  either  the  great 
water-dock  or  ncurvy  grass;  and  several  other  plants;  the  virtues  of  which,  however, 
were  greatly  augmented  by  the  rites  in  plucking  them:  superstitions  not  entirely  out 
of  use  whilst  the  old  herbals  were  regarded  as  books  of  medicine. 


Progress  of  Education. 


THE    ROMAN-BRITISH    SCHOOLS. 

The  records  of  the  state  of  Britain  during  the  occupation  of 
a  portion  of  the  country  by  the  Romans  for  nearly  four  centu 
ries  and  a  half,  afford  but  few  glimpses  of  the  education  of  the 
people.  That  the  Romans  erected  schools  and  academies  in 
our  island,  there  can  be  little  doubt.  The  remains  of  the  en 
gineering  labors  of  this  mighty  people  consist  of  massive  walls 
and  other  military  works,  and  frequently  upon  their  roads  we 
lay  the  railway  of  our  times ;  we  also  find  traces  of  curious  art 
in  the  pavements  of  baths,  the  floors  of  mansions,  and  the  frag 
ments  of  temples  rich  in  the  false  glories  of  Pagan  worship : 
there  is  abundant  evidence  of  luxury,  and  the  iron  hand  of  mili 
tary  rule ;  but  the  most  speculative  archaeologist  will  search  in 
vain  for  the  remains  of  a  Roman  school.  Yet,  the  Roman 
language  was  that  of  administration,  and  most  probably  that  of 
judicial  proceedings  also  ;  whilst  all  natives,  or  persons  of  mixed 
blood,  who  were  allowed  to  aspire  to  any  civil  employment, 
must  have  learned  the  Roman  language  and  laws.  Agricola,  in 
his  second  campaign,  A.D.  79,  overran  the  whole  country,  and 
induced  many  of  the  chiefs  to  allow  their  sons  to  receive  a  Ro 
man  education  ;  so  that  they  who  had  lately  scorned  to  learn  the 
language  of  their  conquerors  became  fond  of  acquiring  the 
Roman  eloquence ;  but  Tacitus  says  :  "  all  this  innovation  was 
by  the  inexperienced  styled  politeness  and  humanity,  when  it 
was  indeed  part  of  their  bondage."  To  the  above  period  also 
belongs  the  first  introduction  of  Christianity  by  St.  Augustine, 
which  necessarily  was  accompanied  with  a  knowledge  of  the 
Greek  language. 

INTRODUCTION    OF    WRITING. 

Writing  is  supposed  to  have  been  very  little  practiced  in 
England  before  the  mission  of  St.  Augustine,  A.D.  595 ;  but  after 
that  time  many  Saxon  manuscripts,  chiefly  on  religious  subjects, 
were  executed  on  parchment,  stained  with  rich  colors,  written  in 
golden  characters,  and  decorated  with  gilding  and  illuminations. 
Saxon  Writing  was  of  the  five  following  kinds  :  1.  Roman  Sax 
on,  with  uncial  or  initial  letters,  interspersed  with  smaller.  2. 
Set  Saxon,  with  square  or  cornered  capitals  in  the  titles  of 
books,  and  the  first  letters  often  in  the  shape  of  men  and  ani 
mals.  3.  Running-hand  Saxon,  with  numerous  contractions, 
which  render  them  difficult  to  be  read.  4.  Mixed  Saxon,  partly 
Roman,  Lombardic,  and  Saxon.  5.  Elegant  Saxon,  more  beau 
tiful  than  the  contemporary  writing  of  either  France,  Italy,  or 


4  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Germany :  it  lasted  until  the  Norman  invasion,  and  was  entirely 
disused  before  the  twelfth  century. 

The  Writing  introduced  by  William  I.  is  commonly  called 
Norman,  though  the  characters  are  nearly  Lombard ;  and  they 
were  used  in  charters  till  the  reign  of  Edward  III.,  with  very 
little  variation.  The  hand  called  modern  Gothic  was  introduced 
into  England  in  the  twelfth  century,  though  it  had  been  prac 
ticed  in  Germany  about  the  close  of  the  ninth.  The  Normans 
also  brought  into  England  the  custom  of  using  seals,  bearing  the 
impress  of  a  knight  on  horseback ;  instead  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
custom  of  signing  a  deed. 

EDUCATION    OF    THE    CLERGY. 

Reading  and  Writing  (says  Sir  F.  Palgrave),  though  no 
longer  mysteries,  as  in  the  Pagan  age,  were  still  acquirements 
almost  wholly  confined  to  the  clergy.  Hence  the  word  "  Cleri- 
cus,"  or  "  Clerk,"  became  synonymous  with  penman,  the  sense 
in  which  it  is  still  most  usually  employed.  If  a  man  could 
write  or  even  read,  his  knowledge  was  considered  as  proof  pre 
sumptive  that  he  was  in  holy  orders.  If  kings  and  great  men 
had  occasion  to  authenticate  any  document,  they  subscribed  the 
sign  of  the  Cross  opposite  to  the  place  where  the  "  Clerk  "  had 
written  their  name.  Hence  we  say,  to  sign  a  deed  or  a  letter. 
Illiterate  people  still  make  their  signs  or  marks,  in  this  manner 
(just  as  Offa  used  to  do,  by  drawing  a  X),  by  the  side  whereof 
the  lawyer's  clerk  adds  their  Christian  and  surnames. 

The  laity,  or  people  who  were  not  clerks,  did  not  feel  any 
urgent  necessity  for  the  use  of  letters.  Commerce  was  carried 
on  principally  by  truck  or  barter,  or  by  payments  in  ready 
money  ;  and  sums  were  cast  up,  as  among  the  Romans,  upon 
an  abacus,  or  accounting-table,  the  amount  being  denoted  by 
counters  or  similar  tokens.  From  the  difficulty  of  communicating 
between  place  and  place,  common  people  had  seldom  any  oppor 
tunity  of  conveying  intelligence  to  absent  friends.  Many  im 
portant  transactions,  which  now  require  writing,  could  then  be 
effected  by  word  of  mouth,  or,  as  lawyers  say,  by  parole.  At  the 
present  day,  if  you  wish  to  buy  a  horse,  it  is  sufficient  for  you 
to  pay  the  money  to  the  owner:  he  delivers  the  horse  to  you, 
you  ride  him  to  the  stable,  and  the  bargain  is  completed.  But 
if  you  wish  to  buy  a  field,  a  huge  deed  must  be  drawn  by  a 
solicitor,  and  engrossed  upon  a  parchment,  which  is  stamped — 
money  being  paid  to  Government  for  the  same.  This  is  called 
a  conveyance.  Now,  in  early  times,  the  horse  and  the  field  might 
be  conveyed  with  equal  simplicity,  and  without  any  writing  what 
ever.  When  land  was  sold,  the  owner  cut  a  turf  from  the  green- 


Progress  of  Education.  5 

sward,  and  cast  it  in  the  lap  of  the  purchaser,  as  a  token  that 
the  possession  of  the  earth  was  transferred ;  or  he  tore  off  the 
branch  of  a  tree,  and  put  it  in  the  hand  of  the  grantee,  to  show 
that  the  latter  was  to  be  entitled  to  all  the  products  of  the  soil. 
And  when  the  purchaser  of  a  house  received  seizin,  or  possession, 
the  key  of  the  door,  or  a  bundle  of  thatch  plucked  from  the  roof, 
signified  that  the  dwelling  had  been  yielded  up  to  him  ;  the  in 
tent  of  these  symbols  being  to  supply  the  place  of  writing,  by 
impressing  the  transaction  upon  the  recollection  of  the  witnesses 
who  were  called  together  upon  the  occasion.* 

CANTERBURY   AND    OTHER    MONASTIC    SCHOOLS    IN    THE 
SEVENTH    CENTURY. 

One  of  the  oldest  schools  of  which  anything  is  known,  is  the 
school  of  Canterbury,  which  is  stated  to  have  been  probably 
established  by  St.  Augustine.  About  a  quarter  of  a  century 
afterward,  Sigebert,  King  of  the  East-Angles,  is  stated  by  Bede 
to  have  founded  an  institution  for  the  instruction  of  youth  of  his 
dominions  similar  to  those  he  had  seen  in  France.  At  Canter 
bury,  St.  Augustine  was  succeeded  by  Archbishop  Theodore,  who, 
with  his  learned  friend  Adrian,  delivered  instructions  to  crowds 
of  pupils,  not  only  in  divinity,  but  also  in  astronomy,  medicine, 
arithmetic,  and  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages.  This  school 
certainly  existed  for  a  long  time,  and  there  is  a  record  of  a  suit 
before  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  1321,  between  the  rec 
tor  of  the  grammar-schools  of  the  city  (supposed  to  be  Theo 
dore's  school,  or  its  representative)  and  the  rector  of  St.  Martin's, 
who  kept  a  school  in  right  of  the  church.  This  school,  prob 
ably,  existed  till  the  Reformation ;  at  least,  the  present  King's 
School  of  Canterbury  was  established  by  Henry  VIIL,  and  prob 
ably  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  school. 

Schools  now  began  to  multiply  in  other  parts,  and  were  gen 
erally  to  be  found  in  all  the  monasteries  and  at  the  bishops' 
seats.  Of  these  episcopal  and  monastic  schools,  that  founded 
by  Bishop  Benedict  in  his  abbey  at  Wearmouth,  where  Bede 
was  educated,  and  that  which  Archbishop  Egbert  established  at 
York,  where  Alcuin  studied,  were  the  most  famous.  Alcuin,  in 
a  poem  wherein  he  describes  his  own  education  at  York,  enu 
merates  the  studies  there  to  have  been,  besides  grammar,  rhet 
oric,  and  poetry,  "  the  harmony  of  the  sky,  the  labor  of  the  sun 
and  moon,  the  five  zones,  the  seven  wandering  planets ;  the  laws, 
risings,  and  settings  of  the  stars,  and  the  aerial  motions  of  the 

*  Sir  F.  Palgravo'g  History  of  England.     Anglo-Saxon  Period. 


6  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

sea  ;  earthquakes  ;  the  nature  of  man,  cattle,  birds,  and  wild 
lirn-K  with  their  various  kind  and  forms  ;  and  the  sacred  Scrip 
tures." 

RISE    OF    ANGLO-SAXON    SCHOOLS. 

The  Latinity  which  Agrieola  had  so  established  in  this  island, 
a?  to  make  it  rather  a  Roman  than  a  British  nation,  had  become 
almost  extinct  before  the  time  of  Alfred.  Some  native  rays  of 
intellectual  light  had,  however,  been  shed  upon  Britain  even 
before  this  dark  period ;  and  the  literature  of  the  Anglo-Saxons 
must  be  dated  from  their  conversion  to  Christianity.  When  St. 
Augustine  came  into  England,  the  Pope  sent  him  several  books, 
some  of  which  are  even  now  extant;  and  in  the  seventh  century, 
a  desire  for  learning  began  to  inspire  the  Anglo-Saxons,  when 
the  King  of  East  Anglia  established  in  his  dominions  a  school 
for.  the  instruction  of  youth.  The  venerable  Bede,  "  the  Wise 
Saxon,"  who  flourished  in  the  eighth  century,  represents  many 
persons  as  reading  and  studying  the  Scriptures.  Egbert,  Arch 
bishop  of  York,  in  712,  had  a  library  of  the  Fathers,  and  sev 
eral  of  the  ancient  and  later  classics.  What  the  value  of  such 
a  collection  must  have  been  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact,  that 
many  years  afterward  a  Countess  of  Anjou  gave  200  sheep, 
and  a  large  parcel  of  rich  furs,  for  a  volume  of  Homilies.  Eg 
bert's  library  was  burnt  in  10G7 ;  but  the  catalogue  was  pre 
served  by  his  pupil,  Alcuinus.  The  wit  and  learning  of  the 
archbishop  induced  the  Emperor  Charlemagne  (who  really  could 
not  write  Jtis  own  name)  to  invite  him  to  his  court;  and  in  one 
of  his  letters  to  this  prince,  Egbert  solicits  him  to  send  the  noble 
youth  of  France  and  Germany  to  be  educated  in  the  excellent 
schools  of  Britain. 

For  many  centuries  knowledge  was  confined  to  the  clergy  ; 
although  under  this  denomination  were  comprehended  many  who 
did  not  exercise  the  office  of  religious  ministry.  Among  the 
Anglo-Saxons,  we  find  children  learning  the  psalms  and  some 
books  by  heart ;  and  brought  up  religiously  at  home  under  their 
parents  or  masters,  either  in  monasteries,  or  under  bishops,  who 
either  made  of  them  monks  or  clerks,  or  sent  them,  when  young 
men,  armed,  to  the  King ;  and  so  minute  are  the  accounts,  that 
figs,  grapes,  nuts,  almonds,  apples,  pears  and  money  are  specified 
as  the  school  rewards. 

Needle-work  was  at  this  early  period  an  important  branch  of 
female  education ;  and  the  English  work  was  celebrated  abroad 
for  its  excellence.  An  Anglo-Saxon  lady  usually  embroidered 
upon  a  curtain  some  famous  action  of  her  husband's  life.  Maid 
servants  used  to  work  with  their  mistresses;  and  needle-work  was 


Progress  of  Education.  7 

practiced  by  men.  The  patterns  of  work  were  drawn  in  books, 
which,  being  cut  to  pieces,  were  used  by  women  to  work  upon 
and  transfer  to  their  samplers.  The  working  of  flowers  was 
particularly  specified  ;  and  we  find  one  kind  practiced  "  in  the 
manner  of  a  vineyard." 

THE    SCHOOLS    OF   ALFRED. 

Such  was  the  state  of  knowledge  in  the  reign  of  Alfred  the 
Great — deemed  in  his  time  the  wisest  man  in  England.  Although 
the  son  of  a  king,  he  was  wholly  uninstructed  until  he  had  reached 
the  age  of  twelve  years,  when  he  was  taught  in  hunting,  build 
ing,  and  psalmody.  Though  he  could  not  read,  however,  he  list 
ened  day  and  night  to  the  verses  which  were  recited  by  min 
strels  and  glee-men,  the  masters  of  Anglo-Saxon  song ;  and  a 
volume  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  shown  to  him  by  his  mother,  and 
which  became  his  own  as  soon  as  he  could  read  it,  so  encouraged 
his  love  of  poetry  that  he  contrived  to  compose  verses  at  intervals 
throughout  his  busy  life.  The  second  volume  which  Alfred  ob 
tained  was  a  selection  of  psalms  and  daily  prayers  according  to 
the  ancient  usage  of  the  church. 

Alfred  was  born  at  Wantage,  on  the  borders  of  the  Vale  of  the  White  Horse,  in  Berk 
shire,  in  849.  As  a  royal  seat,  Wantage  was,  probably,  a  place  of  some  consequence  m 
the  Saxon  times;  it  is  conjectured  to  have  been  a  Roman  station,  and  upon  the  site  of  a 
vallum  of  this  period,  the  palace  in  -which  Alfred  was  born  is  supposed  to  have  stood. 
The  event  of  his  birth  has  been  commemorated  in  a  manner  worthy  of  its  interest. 
Wantage  had  its  grammar-school  founded  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth:  it  fell  into  decay, 
but  has  been  re-founded  under  the  following  circumstances.  On  the  8th  of  September, 
1849,  the  thousandth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Alfred,  that  evtnt  was  celebrated  in 
the  place  of  his  birth.  After  divine  service  in  Wantage  Church,  there  were  addresses 
and  music  in  the  Town-hall;  a  procession  to  ''King  Alfred's  Well;"  distribution  of  food 
to  the  poor  of  Wantage;  an  ox  was  roasted  whole  by  the  aid  of  the  steam-engine;  and 
a  medal  (believed  to  b*>  the  only  one  ever  struck  in  honor  of  Alfred)  was  struck  for  this 
"Anglo-Saxon  Jubilee."  The  commemoration  took  a  more  permanent  form  in  the  fol 
lowing  year,  1850,  when  a  fund  having  been  raised  in  augmentation  of  the  limited  sum 
appropriated  for  the  grammar-school  since  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  there  was  laid  the 
first  stone  of  a  new  school  building  which  has  been  completed.  It  is  in  the  Pointed 
ntyle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  accommodates  seventy  scholars,  of  which  number 
thirty  are  boarders.  Thus  have  the  Governors  of  the  Wantage  Town  Lands  revived  their 
grammar-school,  and  provided  for  the  middle  classes  of  their  neighborhood  a  cheap 
and  efficient  course  of  instruction,  embracing  not  only  a  rudimental  acquaintance  with 
the  Latin  language,  but  the  addition  of  a  sound  modern  education. 

Alfred  is  related  to  have  never  been  without  a  book  in  his 
bosom,  in  which  volume  he  entered  any  memorable  passage  which 
occurred  in  conversation,  until  it  was  entirely  full,  after  which  a 
new  book  was  made,  by  the  advice  of  Asser,  his  tutor,  and  filled 
with  diversified  extracts  on  all  subjects  ;  this  the  King  called 
his  Hand-book.  Asser  wrote  the  life  of  Alfred,  wherein  is  a  pass 
age  which  has  given  rise  to  a  dispute  as  to  the  superior  antiquity 
of  the  schools  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  The  authentic  proofs 
of  the  latter  do  not  extend  beyond  the  seventh  century  ;  whilst  the 
evidence  of  Asser  shows  that  there  were  public  schools  at  Oxford 


8  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

at  least  in  the  fifth  or  sixth  century  ;  but  this  evidence  is  ques 
tionable. 

The  harp  at  this  period  was  a  badge  of  rank,  for,  by  the  Brit 
ish  law,  a  slave  might  not  use  it ;  and  no  one  was  esteemed  a 
gentleman  unless  he  possessed  a  harp,  and  could  play  upon  it. 
Alfred's  skill  in  this  art  led  to  one  of  his  most  brilliant  victories. 
At  Eddington,  near  Hungerford,  in  Berkshire,  in  the  disguise  of 
a  harper,  in  878,  he  visited  the  Danish  camp,  and  obtained  infor 
mation  which  enabled  him  to  surprise  and  entirely  defeat  the  enemy. 

We  next  find  Alfred  actively  engaged  in  *•  the  diffusion  of 
knowledge  "  among  his  people.  No  Council  or  Board  of  Educa 
tion  in  our  time  can  have  exceeded  the  zeal  of  our  Anglo-Saxon 
sovereign  of  ten  centuries  since.  Alfred  addressed  to  the  bishops 
a  circular  letter  earnestly  recommending  the  translation  of  "use 
ful  books  into  the  language  which  we  all  understood ;  so  that  all 
the  youth  of  England,  but  more  especially  those  who  are  of  gen 
tle  kind,  and  at  ease  in  their  circumstances,  may  be  grounded  in 
letters — for  they  cannot  profit  in  any  pursuit  until  they  are  well 
able  to  read  English."  Yet,  gross  was  the  ignorance  of  those 
days.  "  When  I  took  the  kingdom,"  says  Alfred,  "  very  few  on 
this  side  of  the  Humbcr,  very  few  beyond,  not  one  that  I  could 
recollect  south  of  the  Thames,  could  understand  their  prayers  in 
English,  or  could  translate  a  letter  from  Latin  into  English." 
To  supply  this  deficiency,  Alfred  employed  such  scholars  as  the 
time  afforded ;  he  himself  acquired  sufficient  knowlege  of  Latin 
in  his  thirty-eighth  year  to  translate  the  only  book  of  Saxon  his 
tory  then  extant ;  he  translated  other  works  of  great  learning, 
and  attempted  a  complete  version  of  the  Bible,  the  finishing  of 
which  was  prevented  by  his  early  death.  He  even  enforced  ed 
ucation  by  refusing  to  promote  the  uneducated,  as  well  as  by  his 
own  example.  He  insisted  that  the  "  ministers,"  or  the  persons 
whom  he  employed,  should  qualify  themselves  for  their  office; 
and  in  case  of  non-compliance  he  rejected  them.  Aldermen,  and 
mayors,  and  governors,  were  compelled  to  go  to  school  for  this 
late  instruction,  to  them  a  grievous  penance,  rather  than  give 
up  their  emoluments  and  office  ;  and  at  an  advanced  period  of 
his  reign,  Alfred,  "the  truth-teller,"  thanked  God  that  those  who 
sat  in  the  chair  of  the  instructor  were  then  capable  of  teaching. 

Alfred  is  believed  to  have  re-established  many  of  the  old  mo 
nastic  and  episcopal  schools.  Asser  expressly  states  that  he 
founded  a  seminary  for  sons  of  the  nobility,  to  the  support  of 
which  he  devoted  one-eighth  part  of  his  whole  revenue.  Hither 
even  some  noblemen  re*paired  who  had  far  outgrown  their  youth, 
but  scarcely  or  not  at  all  begun  their  acquaintance  with  books. 
This  school  was  attended  not  only  by  the  sons  of  almost  all  the 


Progress  of  Education.  9 

nobility  of  the  realm,  but  also  by  many  of  the  inferior  classes. 
It  was  provided  with  several  masters ;  and  this  seminary  is  main 
tained  by  many  antiquaries  to  have  been  the  foundation  of  the 
University  of  Oxford. 

Alfred's  Schools  were  intended  from  the  first  for  every  person 
of  rank  or  substance,  who,  either  from  age  or  want  of  capacity, 
was  unable  to  learn  or  read  himself,  and  who  was  compelled  to 
send  to  school  either  his  son  or  a  kinsman,  or  if  he  had  neither, 
a  servant,  that  he  might  at  least  be  read  to  by  some  one  ;  for, 
that  rank  was  no  guarantee  of  learning,  we  have  already  seen  ; 
and  Anglo-Saxon  charters  exist,  which,  instead  of  the  names  of 
kings,  exhibit  their  marks,  used,  as  it  is  frankly  explained,  in 
consequence  of  their  ignorance  of  letters. 

The  means  by  which  this  patriotic  King  thus  benefited  his 
people  are  preserved  to  us.  He  usually  divided  his  time  into 
three  equal  portions :  one  was  passed  in  sleep  and  recruiting  his 
body  by  diet  and  exercise ;  another  in  the  dispatch  of  business ; 
a  third  in  study  and  devotion  ;  and  that  he  might  the  more  ex 
actly  measure  the  hours,  he  employed  burning  tapers  of  equal 
length ;  for,  at  this  time,  we  must  recollect  clocks  and  watches 
were  unknown.  And  by  such  a  regular  distribution  of  his  time, 
though  he  suffered  much  by  illness,  Alfred,  who  fought  in  person 
fifty-six  battles  by  sea  and  land,  was  able,  during  a  life  of  no 
extraordinary  length,  to  acquire  more  knowledge,  and  even  to 
compose  more  books,  than  studious  men,  who,  in  more  fortunate 
ages,  have  made  literature  their  uninterrupted  study.  Transla 
tions  of  the  Bible  were  multiplied  through  Alfred's  assiduity ; 
and  from  this,  or  the  Anglo-Saxon  age,  down  to  that  of  Wick- 
liffe  (or,  for  nearly  five  centuries),  we  in  England  can  show  such 
a  succession  of  versions  of  the  Bible  in  metre,  and  in  prose,  as 
are  not  to  be  equaled  amongst  any  other  nation  in  Europe. 
Alfred  is  believed  to  have  given  a  large  estate  for  a  single  book 
on  a  learned  subject ;  a  bargain  which  may  have  given  rise  to 
the  saying,  u  Learning  is  better  than  house  and  land." 

Alfred's  children,  six  in  number,  were  taught  Anglo-Saxon 
prose,  poetry  and  psalms.  ^Ethelweard,  Alfred's  youngest  son, 
received  a  sort  of  public  education :  he  was  committed  to  proper 
teachers,  with  almost  all  the  noble  children  of  the  province,  and 
with  many  of  inferior  rank ;  they  were  all  instructed  in  Latin 
and  Saxon,  and  writing ;  and  when  their  matured  age  gave  the 
requisite  strength,  in  gymnastics  and  archery,*  as  auxiliary  to 

*  Roger  Ascham  (in  his  Toxophilus)  supposes  the  English  to  have  learned  Archery 
from  tlie  Saxons;  hence,  by  the  ancient  English  laws,  there  is  a  more  severe  penalty  for 
hurting  the  finger,  which  is  necessary  for  letting  the  arrow  fly,  than  for  the  maiming  of 
any  of  the  others.  Barrington  traces  Bow  to  the  German  word  bogen,  and  Arrow  to  the 


10  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

warlike  habits.  Nor  was  Alfred's  example  lost  upon  his  suc 
cessors.  Wolstan  says  of  Ethelwold — 4'  It  was  always  delightful 
to  him  to  teach  children  and  youth,  and  to  construe  Latin  books 
to  them  in  English,  and  explain  to  them  the  rules  of  grammar 
and  Latin  versification." 

ST.    DUNSTAN,    THE    SCHOLAR    OF    GLASTONBUBY. 

About  six  miles  from  the  ancient  city  of  Wells,  in  Somerset 
shire,  are  the  picturesque  ruins  of  Glastonbury  Abbey,  once  the 
richest  abbey  in  the  kingdom,  and  the  most  magnificent  pile  of 
Anglo-Norman  ecclesiastical  architecture.  In  the  village  hard 
by  was  born  St.  Dunstan,  A.D.  925.  His  earliest  instruction  in 
the  learning  of  his  time  he  received  in  the  monastery.  The 
place  was  not  then  conventually  regulated ;  and  thither  came 
chiefly  from  Ireland  many  illustrious  men  versed  in  sacred  and 
secular  science,  and  there  opened  schools,  admitting  the  children 
of  the  nobility.  Among  these  scholars  was  St.  Dunstan.  He 
applied  himself  to  "the  sciences  of  the  philosophers"  with  un 
common  ardor:  thus  he  learned  arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, 
and  music.  Like  the  prophet  David,  he  would  sometimes  seize 
his  psaltery,  strike  the  harp,  swell  the  organ,  or  touch  the  cymbal. 

Upon  quitting  school,  he  passed  a  few  years  at  the  court  of 
King  Athelstan,  when  upon  some  affront,  he  returned  to  Glas 
tonbury,  and  having  in  early  youth  received  the  tonsure  there, 
he  built  himself  a  cell  or  hermitage,  with  an  oratory,  and  in  the 
intervals  of  his  devotional  austerities,  employed  himself  in  such 
manual  arts  as  were  useful  to  the  service  of  the  church — in  the 
formation  of  crosses,  vials,  censers,  vestments,  etc. :  he  could 
paint,  write  a  beautiful  hand,  carve  figures,  and  work  in  gold, 
silver,  brass,  or  iron  ;  and  after  Alfred,  the  liberal  arts  were  much 
indebted  to  his  zeal :  he  was  altogether  one  of  the  most  memora 
ble  men  of  his  time. 

Apart  from  its  interest  as  an  ancient  seat  of  learning,  Glaston 
bury  is  one  of  the  most  hallowed  spots  in  the  kingdom ;  and  as 
the  wind  sighs  through  its  lone  arches  and  hoary  stones,  you 
reflect  that  here  lie  the  bodies  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea,  King 
Edgar,  and  King  Arthur;  and  numberless  martyrs  and  bishops, 
and  other  men  of  mark.  The  building  which  now  serves  as  the 
George  Inn  was  in  the  monastic  times  an  hospital  for  pilgrims 
to  the  shrine  of  St.  Joseph.  His  chapel,  and  the  monastery 
kitchen,  remain. 

Saxon  arepe.  Archery  in  war  seems  to  have  been  disused  immediately  aft»r  the  Norman 
Conquent,  and  to  have  been  revived  by  the  Crusaders:  they  had,  doubtle*»,  felt  the 
effect*  of  it  fr»>m  the  Saracen.",  (who  had  probably  derived  it  from  the  Parthiuns) — Kd- 
ward  I.  was  wounded  by  oue  of  their  arrow*;  and  in  this  Kinu'n  reign  was  formed  a  *o- 
ciety  called  the  Archers  of  Finsbury.  The  same  society,  having  laid  attide  the  bow  and 
a  row,  became  subsequently  the  Artillery  Company  of  the  City  of  London. 


Progress  of  Education.  11 


KING    CANUTE    A    POET. 

Under  the  Danish  dynasty,  little  seems  to  have  been  done  for 
the  promotion  of  letters,  if  we  except  the  brilliant  example  of 
Canute.  He  was  successful  in  war ;  and  in  peace,  humane, 
gentle,  and  religious.  He  was  a  liberal  patron  of  men  of  letters  : 
he  afforded  the  amplest  encouragement  to  Scandinavian  poetry, 
and  Olenes  names  eight  Danish  poets  who  flourished  at  his  Court. 
Sir  Bulwer  Lytton  has  an  ingenious  speculation  upon  the  great 
influence  which  the  poetry  of  the  Danes  has  had  upon  our 
early  national  muse ;  and  he  has  little  doubt  but  that  to  its 
source  may  be  traced  the  minstrelsy  of  our  borders,  and  the  Scot 
tish  Lowlands ;  while  even  in  the  central  counties,  the  example 
and  exertions  of  Canute  must  have  had  considerable  effect  upon 
the  taste  and  spirit  of  our  Scopec.  Canute  himself,  too,  was  the 
author  of  a  popular  ballad,  which  long  after  his  death  remained 
a  favorite  with  the  people. 

The  verse  that  has  been  preserved  of  this  song  composed  by  Canute  as  he  was  one 
day  rowing  on  the  Nen,  while  the  holy  music  came  floating  on  the  air,  and  along  the 
water  from  the  neighboring  minster  of  Ely — a  song  which,  we  are  told  by  the  historian, 
continued  to  his  day,  after  the  lapse  of  a  century  and  a  half,  to  be  a  universally  popu 
lar  favorite — is  very  nearly  such  English  as  was  written  in  the  fourteenth  century.  This 
fragment  is  as  follows : 

Merie  sungen  the  munneches  binnen  Ely 
Tha  Cnut  Ching  rew  there  by; 
Roweth,  cnihtes,  noer  the  land, 
And  here  we  thes  muneches  saeng. 

That  is  literally: 

Merrily  (sweetly)  sung  the  monks  within  Ely 
(When)  that  Canute  king  rowed  thereby: 
Row,  Knights,  near  the  land, 
And  hear  we  these  monks'  song. 

B-nng  in  verse  and  in  rhyme,  it  is  probable  that  the  words  are  reported  in  their 
original  form;  they  cannot,  at  any  rate,  be  much  altered. — Literature  and  Learning  of 
England.  By  G.  L.  Craik,  M.A. 

The  Danes  were,  in  general,  the  destroyers  of  learning  at  this 
period ;  nearly  all  the  monasteries  and  schools  connected  with 
them  throughout  the  kingdom  being  either  actually  laid  in  ashes 
by  these  Northern  invaders,  or  deserted  in  the  general  terror 
and  destruction  occasioned  by  their  attacks.  Under  Canute, 
who  was  a  wise  as  well  as  a  powerful  sovereign,  the  schools  de 
stroyed  during  the  Danish  wars,  no  doubt,  rose  again  and  flour 
ished. 

THE    EARLIEST    BOOKS. 

Staves,  or  rods  of  wood,  appear  to  have  preceded  the  introduc 
tion  of  school-books  ;  for  the  Egyptian  papyrus  was  rarely  to  be 
obtained  in  Europe,  and  parchment  or  vellum  was  too  costly  for 


12  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

ordinary  use ;  so  that  a  painstaking  clerk  could  find  it  worth  his 
while  to  erase  the  writing  of  an  old  manuscript  in  order  to  use 
the  blank  vellum  for  another  writing.  The  only  learned  works 
were  written  in  Latin,  which  was  used  in  all  documents  relating 
to  church  affairs,  but  could  only  be  acquired  with  great  difficulty 
by  the  people.  Copious  dictionaries  were  then  unknown  ;  al 
though  there  might  have  been  a  meager  vocabulary,  of  which 
perhaps  three  or  four  copies  existed  in  a  whole  kingdom  ;  but  a 
stock  of  words  could  only  be  acquired  from  a  teacher,  and  by 
memory. 

The  studies  of  this  period  must  have  been  greatly  impeded  by 
the  scarcity  and  high  price  of  books;  although  their  multiplica 
tion  went  on  much  more  rapidly  than  formerly.  Few  of  the 
monasteries  were  without  libraries  of  greater  or  less  extent. 
A  convent  without  a  library,  it  used  to  be  proverbially  said, 
was  like  a  castle  without  an  armory.  When  the  monastery  of 
Croydon  was  burnt,  in  1091,  its  library,  according  to  Ingulphus, 
consisted  of  900  volumes,  of  which  300  were  very  large.  To 
these  instances  may  be  added  that  the  founder  of  the  Abbey  of 
Wearmouth,  about  the  end  of  the  seventh  century,  collected  a 
considerable  library,  at  the  cost  not  only  of  much  money,  but  also 
of  great  exertion,  he  having  made  five  journeys  to  Rome  for  the 
purchase  of  books  and  other  items  for  the  establishment.  Bede 
records  that  the  founder  sold  one  of  his  volumes,  a  work  on  cos 
mography,  to  his  sovereign,  Alfred  of  Northumberland,  for  eight 
hides  of  land. 

In  every  great  abbey  there  was  an  apartment  called  the  Scriptorium,  where  many 
writers  were  constantly  buried  in  transcribing  not  only  the  service-books  for  the  choir, 
but  books  for  the  library.  '-The  Scriptorium  of  St.  Alban's  Abbey  was  built  by  Abbot 
1'aulin,  a  Norman,  who  ordered  many  volumes  to  be  written  there,  about  the  year  1009. 
Archbishop  I^anfranc  furnished  the  copies.  Estates  were  often  granted  for  the  support 

of  the  Scriptorium Some  of  the  classics  were  written  in  the  English  mona>terie« 

very  early.  Henry,  a  Benedictine  monk  of  Hyde  Abbey,  near  Winchester,  transcribed 
in  the  year  1178,  Terence.  Boethius,  Suetonius,  and  Claudian.  Of  these  he  formed  one 
book,  illuminating  the  initials,  and  forming  the  brazen  bosses  of  the  cover  with  his 
own  hands."  The  monks  were  accustomed  both  to  illuminate  and  to  bind  books,  as 
well  as  to  transcribe  them.  "The  scarcity  of  parchment  undoubtedly  prevented  the 
transcription  of  many  other  books  in  these  societies.  About  the  year  Il20.  one  Master 
Hugh,  being  appointed  to  the  convent  of  St.  Edmondsbury,  in  Suffolk,  to  write  and  illu 
minate  a  grand  copy  of  the  Bible  for  their  library,  could  procure  no  parchment  for  this 
purpose  in  England."  (Warton's  Introduction  of  Learning  into  England  )  Mr.  Hallam 
supposes  the  deficiency  to  hare  been  of  skins  beautiful  enough  for  the  purpose  :  it  can 
not  be  meant  that  there  was  no  parchment  for  legal  instruments.  Paper  made  of  cotton, 
however,  was  certainly  in  common  use  in  the  twelfth  century,  though  no  evidence 
exists  that  that  manufactured  from  linen  rags  was  known  till  about  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth. 

THE  SAXON  LANGUAGE. FORMATION  OF  THE  ENGLISH 

LANGUAGE. 

The  primitive  character  of  the  population  of  Britain  having 
been  effaced  by  its  Roman  occupation,  its  great  masters  were 
eventually  overrun  and  conquered  by  the  Teutons,  whose  three 


Progress  of  Education.  13 

distinct  tribes  of  the  Low  Germans — the  Angles,  the  Saxons, 
and  the  Jutes — made  themselves  masters  of  our  island.  They 
naturally  brought  with  them  a  change  of  language  :  the  Teutonic 
superseded  the  Latin,  one  cause  of  which  was  that  the  popula 
tion  of  Britain  had  been  continually  and  largely  increased  by  the 
immigration  of  German  settlers,  so  that  the  German  spirit  was 
far  more  powerful  than  the  Roman.  The  three  different  branches 
of  Low  Germans  could  understand  one  another  with  not  much 
more  difficulty  than  at  the  present  day  a  Lancashire  peasant 
would  discourse  with  a  Yorkshireman.  There  was,  doubtless, 
a  strong  difference  of  dialect  between  the  languages  spoken  by 
the  Angles,  the  Saxons,  and  the  Jutes,  and  these  divisions  were 
the  foundation  of  the  great  classes  of  the  modern  dialects  of 
England. 

The  Jutes,  represented  chiefly  by  the  people  of  Kent,  were 
the  least  numerous,  and  exercised  no  permanent  literary  in 
fluence  upon  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  confederacy.  It  was  the 
Angles,  numerically  by  far  the  most  powerful  of  the  Teutonic 
settlers,  who  first  took  the  lead  in  intelligence  and  in  literature. 
To  them  chiefly  belong  the  earliest  literary  productions  of  the 
Anglo-Saxons,  and  the  oldest  Anglo-Saxon  traditions  known ;  and 
their  influence  over  the  rest  was  so  great,  that  not  only  did  they 
accept  from  them  the  general  title  of  English,  but  even  the  na 
tions  of  the  Continent  who  had  generally  preserved  the  Roman 
language,  generally  agreed  in  giving  to  the  Teutonic  population 
of  Britain  the  name  of  Angli.  Thus  we  derive  from  this  one 
branch  of  the  triple  composition  of  our  race,  the  national  name 
of  which  we  are  proud,  that  of  Englishmen,  and  it  is  from  them 
that  our  language  is  called  ENGLISH. 

Nevertheless,  the  Anglian  division  of  the  race  fell  in  the  course 
of  the  eighth  century  under  the  superior  influence  of  the  Saxons, 
and  Wessex,  or  the  kingdom  of  the  West  Saxons,  not  only  gave 
us  finally  our  line  of  Kings,  but  furnished  us  with  the  model  of 
our  language  and  literature.  The  written  English  of  the  pres 
ent  day  is  founded  upon  that  dialect  in  which  King  Alfred 
•wrote ;  and  with  this  change  in  the  predominance  of  race,  the 
term  Saxon  came  into  more  frequent  use  to  designate  the  Teu 
tonic  population  of  this  island ;  and  as  there  continued  to  be 
Saxons  on  the  Continent  as  well  as  in  England,  it  has  become 
the  practice  to  call  our  own  ancestors,  by  way  of  distinction  and 
not  as  indicating  an  amalgamation  of  race,  the  ANGLO-SAXONS, 
that  is,  the  Saxons  of  England.  Still,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
that  our  knowledge  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  language  is,  after  all,  im 
perfect  ;  for  our  nomenclature  is  made  up  from  written  docu 
ments  of  a  partial  description,  and  there  no  doubt  existed  a  great 


14  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

number  of  words  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  language  which  are  now 
entirely  lost.  No  doubt,  many  words  now  found  in  the 
English  language,  and  especially  in  the  provincial  dialects,  of 
which  the  origin  is  unknown,  had  their  equivalents  in  pure 
Anglo-Saxon.  This  language  was  not  influenced  by  the  Danes  ; 
and  that  which  our  forefathers  spoke  in  the  middle  of  the 
eleventh  century  was  the  same  Low  German  dialect  which  they 
had  brought  with  them  into  the  island,  with  certain  changes  of 
time  and  circumstances.  At  this  period,  the  Norman  Conquest 
brought  a  new  language,  French,  as  it  was  then  talked  and 
written  in  Normandy  ;  and  the  resulting  dialect,  Anglo-Norman, 
continued  during  two  centuries  to  be  exclusively  the  language  of 
the  aristocracy  of  England.  Meanwhile,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  or  as 
we  must  henceforward  call  it,  the  English  tongue,  was  not  aban 
doned  or  disused  ;  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  grammar  of  the  Latin 
language  by  Alfric,  continued  to  be  used  in  the  English  schools 
till  late  in  the  twelfth  century.  To  the  first  half  of  this  century 
is  ascribed  a  manuscript  of  Alfric's  grammar,  with  an  interlinear 
gloss  of  some  of  the  Saxon  words  in  Anglo-Norman.  Hicks,  the 
Anglo-Saxon  scholar,  had  in  his  possession  the  above  manuscript ; 
and  Sir  Thomas  Phillipps  found  among  the  archives  of  Worcester 
cathedral  some  leaves  of  a  copy  of  Alfric's  grammar,  written  in 
the  degraded  form  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  language  which  prevailed 
in  the  middle  and  latter  half  of  the  twelfth  eentury.  From 
various  literary  remains  it  is  evident  that  the  use  of  the  English 
language,  during  the  twelfth  century,  and  the  first  half  of  the 
thirteenth,  was  by  no  means  confined  to  the  lower  classes  of 
society,  but  it  prevailed  generally  among  the  middle  and  edu 
cated  classes,  among  the  clergy  and  in  the  monastic  houses,  at 
least  those  devoted  to  females.* 

The  English  Language  consists  of  about  38,000  words.  This 
includes,  of  course,  not  only  radical  words,  but  all  derivatives, 
except  the  preterites  and  participles  of  verbs ;  to  which  must  be 
added  some  few  terms,  which,  though  set  down  in  the  dictiona 
ries,  are  either  obsolete,  or  have  never  ceased  to  be  considered 
foreign.  Of  these,  about  23,000,  or  nearly  five-eighths,  are  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin.!  The  majority  of  the  rest,  in  what  pro 
portions  we  cannot  say,  are  Latin  and  Greek :  Latin,  however, 
has  the  larger  share. 

•Abridged  from  a  very  able  Lecture  on  the  History  of  the  English  language,  delivered 
before  the  Historic  Society  of  I.ancashire.  by  Thomas  Wright,  Esq.,  M.A.,  F.S.A.,  etc. 
See  Transactions  of  the  Historic  Society,  Vol.  ix. 

t  Dr.  Bosworth.  the  eminent  Anglo-Saxon  scholar,  has  published  a  work  by  King 
Alfred  in  the  original  Anglo  Saxon  and  in  an  English  version.  The  text  is  from  two  ex 
iKting  manuscript  copies  :  the  subject  is  a  description  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  with 
the  voyages  of  Ohthere  and  Wulfstan. 


Progress  of  Education.  15 


EDUCATION    OF    WILLIAM    THE    CONQUEROR. 

In  the  curious  old  town  of  Falaise,  in  Normandy,  is  shown 
a  small  house-front  which  exhibits  a  bust  of  WILLIAM  THE 
CONQUEROR,  whose  name  the  house  bears.  But  "  the  cradle 
of  the  Conqueror"  is  a  small  chamber  in  the  thickness  of  the 
wall  of  the  Norman  ducal  palace  or  castle  at  Falaise.  "It 
was  in  this  narrow  room,"  says  Miss  Costello,  "once  said  to 
have  been  adorned  with  gold  and  vermillion,  and  other  gay  hues, 
that  a  child  was  born  in  secresy  and  mystery,  and  that  by  the 
imperfect  light  his  beautiful  mother  looked  upon  the  features  of 
the  future  hero  of  Normandy."  That  good  fortune  which  never 
deserted  William  in  after-life,  shone  upon  his  infancy.  He  soon 
became  a  favorite  with  his  father,  and  was  carefully  nurtured 
and  brought  up  in  the  castle,  where  princely  attendance  was 
lavished  upon  him,  and  up  to  his  ninth  year  his  father  bestowed 
the  utmost  care  upon  his  education.  He  was  early  inured  to  mili 
tary  exercise  :  at  the  age  of  five  he  is  said  to  have  commanded  a 
battalion  of  children,  at  the  head  of  which  he  went  through  the 
usual  evolutions.  At  the  age  of  nine  he  could  already  read  and 
explain  Caesar's  Commentaries  :  he  was  removed  by  his  father  to 
the  French  court,  where  his  education  was  carefully  completed 
with  the  aid  of  the  first  masters.  At  Paris,  he  was  brought  up 
with  the  young  French  princes,  where  he  received  instruction  in 
the  military  schools  ;  and  he  was  surpassed  by  none  of  his  youth 
ful  comrades  in  the  varied  accomplishments  of  feudal  nobility,  or  in 
extensive  reading  and  sound  study  of  the  military  art.  The  inter 
vals  between  his  studies  he  spent  either  in  field-sports,  especially 
hawking  and  hunting,  or  in  evolutions  with  the  troops,  of  which 
he  was  remarkably  fond.  Sometimes  also  he  would  attend  the 
envoys  of  the  French  King  in  their  missions  to  surrounding 
courts  and  states,  and  thus  became  instructed  in  diplomacy. 
Meanwhile,  he  was  temperate  and  active,  and  assiduously  eager 
in  the  acquisition  of  fresh  knowledge.  Of  William's  genius 
there  is  ample  record  :  the  Norman  writers  praise  him  as  a  wise 
and  pious  King ;  the  Chronicle  of  the  Sea  Kings  of  Norway 
describes  him  as  u  a  very  wise  man,  but  not  considered  a  man  to 
be  trusted;"  and  even  the  Saxon  Chronicler,  who  had  lived 
some  time  in  his  Court,  says,  "  he  was  wise  and  rich,  mild  to 
good  men,  but  beyond  all  measure  severe  to  those  who  withstood 
his  will." 

LANFRANC — INGULPHUS  AND  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  CROYLAND. 

William  the  Conqueror  patronized  and  loved  letters.     Many 
of  the   Norman  prelates  preferred  in   England  by  him   were 


16  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

polite  scholars.  Herman,  a  bishop  of  Salisbury,  founded  a 
noble  library  in  his  cathedral.  Godfrey,  prior  of  St.  Swith- 
in's,  at  Winchester,  was  an  elegant  epigrammatist,  and  wrote 
with  the  smartness  and  ease  of  Martial.  Geoffrey,  another 
learned  Norman,  established  a  school  at  Dunstable,  where  he 
composed  a  play,  which  was  acted  by  his  scholars,  dressed  in 
character  in  copes  borrowed  from  the  neighboring  abbey  of  St. 
Alban's. 

One  of  the  most  learned  men  of  this  age  was  Lanfranc,  a 
native  of  Lombardy,  and  born  of  a  noble  family.  Having 
obtained  the  best  education  that  the  universities  of  Italy  could 
afford,  he  practiced  as  a  lawyer  in  his  native  city  of  Pavia.  He 
next  quitted  the  bar,  passed  the  Alps,  and  settling  in  Normandy, 
opened  a  school  in  Avranches.  lie  suddenly  disappeared,  and 
in  three  years  was  discovered  in  the  small  and  poor  monastery  of 
Bee,  where  he  had  become  a  monk,  and  had  risen  to  the  office  of 
prior.  lie  then  opened  a  school  there,  was  quickly  surrounded 
with  scholars,  while  his  fame  as  a  teacher  enriched  the  monastery. 
His  natural  arrogance  and  deep  policy  was  shown  in  an  incident 
which  occurred  on  a  visit  made  him  by  Bishop  Ilerfast,  with  a 
numerous  company  of  Duke  William's  courtiers.  When  they 
appeared  in  his  lecture-room,  he  had  the  audacity  to  hand  the 
bishop  a  spelling-book.  This  insult  was  resented :  complaint 
was  made  to  William,  the  farm  of  the  monastery  was  burned,  and 
Lanfranc  was  ordered  to  fly  from  Normandy,  lie  mounted  on 
a  poor  lame  horse,  rode  to  the  Court,  and  told  the  Duke  he 
was  most  willing  to  obey  his  orders,  but  that  it  was  plain  he 
could  not  with  the  animal  on  which  he  was  mounted,  and  begged 
the  favor  of  a  good  horse.  William  laughed  heartily,  took  him 
into  favor,  and  made  him  Abbot  of  St.  Stephen,  at  Caen,  where 
he  established  an  academy.  He  accompanied  William  to  Eng 
land,  and  four  years  after  the  Conquest  he  was  called  to  the  See  of 
Canterbury.  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  Lanfranc,  who  had 
done  so  much  for  Normandy,  and  whose  literary  fame  was  com 
mensurate  with  Europe,  established  schools  in  England,  and  re 
vived  the  love  of  letters ;  for  we  are  told  that,  by  incessant  labors, 
"  he  roused  the  rude  minds  of  many  to  good,  rubbed  away  the 
rust  of  viciousncss,  extirpated  the  seeds  of  evil,  and  planted  those 
of  virtue."  Speaking  of  the  monks  of  his  own  time,  the  historian 
of  Malmesbury  says:  "Their  minds  are  still  formed  on  the  model 
of  Lanfranc ;  his  memory  is  dear  to  them ;  a  warm  devotion  to 
God,  to  strangers  a  pleasing  affability,  still  remain ;  nor  shall 
ages  see  extinguished  what  in  him  was  a  benevolence  of  heart, 
comprising  the  human  race,  and  felt  by  each  one  that  approached 
him." 


Progress  of  Education.  17 

One  of  Lanfranc's  admirers  was  Ingulphus,  the  Abbot  of 
Croyland :  he  is  remarkable  as  the  first  upon  record  who, 
having  laid  the  foundation  of  his  learning  at  Westminster,  pro 
ceeded  for  its  further  cultivation  to  Oxford.  He  was  born  of 
English  parents,  and  a  native  of  the  city  of  London.  Whilst  a 
school-boy  at  Westminster,  he  was  so  fortunate  as  to  interest 
in  his  behalf  Egitha,  the  daughter  of  Earl  Godwin,  and  queen 
of  Edward  the  Confessor — a  young  person  of  great  beauty  and 
learning,  modest,  and  of  a  sweet  disposition.  "  I  have  often  seen 
her  in  my  childhood,"  says  the  Abbot  Ingulphus,  "  when  I  went 
to  visit  my  father,  who  was  employed  in  the  King's  palace.  If 
she  met  me  on  my  return  from  school,  she  interrogated  me  upon 
my  grammar,  poetry,  or  even  logic,  in  which  she  was  well  versed; 
and  when  she  had  entangled  me  in  the  meshes  of  some  subtle 
argument,  she  never  failed  to  bestow  upon  me  three  or  four 
crowns,  by  her  servant,  and  to  send  me  to  have  refreshment  in 
the  buttery."  Egitha  was  mild  and  kind  to  all  who  approached 
her  ;  those  who  disliked  the  somewhat  savage  pride  of  her  father 
and  brother,  praised  her  for  not  resembling  them,  as  is  poetically 
expressed  in  a  Latin  verse,  then  much  esteemed :  "Sicut  spina 
roscun,  genuit  Godwinus  Editham" — "As  the  thorn  produces  the 
rose,  Godwin  produces  Editha." 

"  It  is  possible  "  (says  the  Rev.  Mr.  Tyler,  in  his  Henry  of 
MonmoutJi}  "  that  many  of  our  fair  countrywomen,  in  the  highest 
ranks  now,  are  not  aware  that,  more  than  800  years  ago,  their 
fair  and  noble  predecessors  could  play  with  a  Westminster  scholar 
in  grammar,  verses,  and  logic."  Ingulphus  tells  how  he  made 
proficiency  beyond  many  of  his  equals  in  mastering  the  doctrines 
of  Aristotle,  and  covered  himself  to  the  very  ankles  in  Cicero's 
Rhetoric ! 

In  his  History  of  the  Abbey  of  Croyland,  which  he  governed, 
he  minutely  describes  its  buildings,  its  various  fortunes,  posses 
sions,  and  immunities,  its  treasures,  its  monks,  its  occupations, 
and  its  statutes.  No  distinct  period  seems  to  have  been  allotted 
to  study ;  though  it  is  related  that,  on  one  occasion,  a  present  of 
forty  large  original  volumes  of  divers  doctrines,  and  of  more  than 
one  hundred  smaller  copies  of  books  of  various  subjects,  was 
made  to  the  common  library.  Sometimes  also  the  names  are 
mentioned  of  men  said  to  have  been  "  deeply  versed  in  every 
branch  of  literature."  In  the  story  of  the  abbot  Turketul,  we 
read  that  as  the  convent  was  rich,  he  relieved  the  indigent,  so 
laced  the  unhappy,  and  provided  succor  for  all  in  distress.  In 
the  neighborhood,  such  children  were  educated  as  were  designed 
for  the  monastic  life.  These  the  abbot  visited  once  every  day, 
watching,  with  parental  solicitude,  their  progress  in  their  several 
2 


18  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

tasks  ;  rewarding  their  diligence  with  such  little  presents  (which 
•rvant  carried  with  him)  as  children  love  ;  and  animating  all 
liv  exhortation,  or,  when  necessary,  compelling  them  by  chas 
tisement,  to  the  discharge  of  their  duties. 

Of  Croyland  Abbey,  standing  upon  the  south  border  of  Lin 
colnshire,  there  remain  considerable  portions  of  its  church,  of 
Norman,  Early  English,  and  Perpendicular  architecture  ;  and,  as 
the  lover  of  our  national  antiquities  stands  upon  the  adjoining 
triangular  bridge  of  the  14th  century  (supposed  to  have  been 
designed  as  a  symbol  of  the  Holy  Trinity),  he  may  reflect  that 
within  the  hallowed  convent  walls  dwelt  some  of  the  earliest 
promoters  of  education ;  and  as  from  these  picturesque  ruins 
over  the  neighboring  fens  the  eye  ranges,  it  may  rest  upon  some 
nobly  built  churches,  yet  it  would  not  unwillingly  exchange  the 
view  of  the  monastic  ruins  for  many  an  uninjured  abiding  home 
of  the  Reformed  faith. 

WILLIAM   II. HENRY  I. STEPHEN. 

Of  the  education  of  WILLIAM  II.,  the  third  son,  and  the  suc 
cessor  of  the  Conqueror,  we  have  few  details.  He  was  born 
about  1000,  and  was  placed  by  his  father  under  Lanfranc,  who 
superintended  his  education,  and  conferred  on  the  prince  the 
honor  of  knighthood,  agreeably  to  the  manners  of  the  time. 

HENRY  I.,  born  in  1068,  at  Selby,  in  Yorkshire,  the  only  son 
of  the  Conqueror  who  was  an  Englishman  by  birth,  was  surnamed 
Beauchrc,  or  the  scholar,  having  received  a  more  literary  educa 
tion  than  was  then  usually  given  either  to  the  sons  of  kings  or 
to  laymen  of  any  rank :  this  advantage  was  seconded  by  natural 
abilities  of  a  superior  order ;  and  in  his  after-life,  in  the  midst  of 
his  profligacy  and  unscrupulous  ambition,  Henry  cherished  a 
love  of  letters,  and  in  his  leisure  was  fond  of  the  society  of  learned 
men. 

The  early  years  of  instruction  Henry  passed  in  liberal  arts,  and  so  thoroughly  imbibed 
the  sweets  of  learning,  that  no  warlike  commotions,  no  pressure  of  business,  could  ever 
erase  them  from  his  noble  mind;  although  he  neither  read  much  openly,  nor  displayed 
his  attainments  except  sparingly.  His  learning,  however,  to  speak  the  truth,  though 
obtained  bv  snatches,  assisted  him  much  in  the  science  of  governing;  according  to  that 
Raying  of  Plato,  "Happy  would  b«  the  commonwealth,  if  philosophers  governed,  or 
kiugs  would  be  philosophers."  Not  slightly  tinctured  by  philosophy,  then,  by  degrees, 
in  process  of  time,  he  learned  how  to  restrain  tho  people  with  lenity;  nor  did  he  ever 
Butler  his  soldiers  to  engage  but  where  he  saw  a  pressing  emergency.  In  this  manner, 
by  learning,  he  trained  hii  early  years  to  the  hope  of  the  kingdom;  and  often  in  his 
father's  hearing  made  use  of  the  proverb,  that  '-An  illiterate  king  is  a  crowned  ass.'1 
They  relate,  too,  that  his  father,  observing  his  disposition,  never  omitted  any  means  of 
cherishing  his  lively  prudence;  and  that  once  when  he  had  been  ill-used  by  one  of  his 
brothers,  and  was  in  tears,  he  spirited  him  up,  by  saying,  %>  Weep  not,  my  boy;  you  too 
will  bo  a  king." — William  of  Malmcsbwy. 

Henry  was  sent  by  his  father  to  the  abbey  of  Abingdon,  where 
he  was  initiated  in  the  sciences  under  the  care  of  the  Abbot 


Progress  of  Education.  19 

Grymbald,  and  Farice,  a  physician  of  Oxford.  Robert  d'Oilly, 
constable  of  Oxford  Castle,  was  ordered  to  pay  for  the  board  of 
the  young  prince  in  the  convent,  which  the  Conqueror  himself 
frequently  visited.  Henry  was  also  well  educated  in  France : 
his  talents  were  great,  and  under  such  a  prince,  pre-eminently 
entitled  to  be  styled  Beauclerc,  the  arts  of  peace  prospered  ;  the 
seminaries  of  learning  were  protected ;  teachers  abounded  ;  the 
convents  furnished  an  undisturbed  retreat  to  the  studious ;  and, 
in  short,  letters  were  generally  patronized  and  cultivated. 

STEPHEN,  born  about  1096,  was  brought  up  at  the  court  of  his 
uncle,  Henry  I.,  and  received  many  benefits  from  him. 

HENRY    THE    SECOND,  HIS  LOVE  OF  LETTERS SPORTS    OF  THE 

LONDON  SCHOLARS. 

Henry  II.,  born  at  Mans,  in  Maine,  in  1133,  was  brought  to 
England  in  his  tenth  year,  by  his  uncle,  Robert  Earl  of  Glou 
cester,  who  being  distinguished  for  his  scholarship  and  love  of 
letters,  superintended  the  education  of  the  young  prince,  while 
he  remained  for  five  years  shut  up  for  safety  in  the  strong  castle 
of  Bristol.  From  his  excellent  uncle  Henry  imbibed  a  greater 
degree  of  literary  culture  than  was  then  usual  among  princes : 
his  faculties  received  a  learned  training,  and  to  the  end  of  his 
days  he  preserved  an  attachment  to  literature  and  to  the  conver 
sation  of  scholars,  and  he  drew  around  him  many  of  the  chief 
lights  of  the  time.  His  reign  has,  however,  according  to  a  very 
common  but  incorrect  mode  of  speaking,  been  called  a  Dark  Age  ; 
for  an  age  cannot  possibly  be  dark  which  had  such  men  living  in 
it  as  John  of  Salisbury,  Peter  of  Blois,  Thomas  a  Becket,  and 
many  others,  especially  historians,  whose  writings  show  the  great 
extent  of  their  reading  and  intellectual  power.  John  was  well 
acquainted  with  the  Latin  and  Greek  writers ;  he  had  some 
knowledge  of  Hebrew  ;  he  was  skilled  in  the  mathematics,  nat 
ural  philosophy,  theology,  and  morals  ;  he  was  an  elegant  orator 
and  an  eminent  poet ;  and  he  was  amiable  and  cheerful,  innocent 
and  good.  His  letters  are  delightful  reading  :  his  style  was  best 
adapted  to  this  species  of  composition,  and  his  correspondents 
were  among  the  first  personages  of  the  age.  Peter  of  Blois  was 
invited  by  Henry  into  England,  became  his  secretary,  and  en 
joyed  high  ecclesiastical  dignities :  his  writings  are  chiefly  theo 
logical,  but  his  letters  are  now  alone  read :  like  the  letters  of  John  of 
Salisbury  they  abound  in  quotations  from  Scripture,  and  from 
ecclesiastical  and  profane  writers,  but  Peter's  own  writing  is  en 
cumbered  by  forced  antitheses  and  a  constant  play  upon  words. 
Thomas  a  Becket  was  born  in  London,  and  educated  at  Oxford, 
but  was  sent  to  France,  while  young,  to  lose  the  English  accent, 


20  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

the  hateful  vulgarity  of  which  would  have  rendered  his  associa 
tion  with  respectable  people  impossible.  He  returned  from  his 
travels  fully  accomplished.  Theobald,  archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
made  him  his  deacon,  and  the  King  made  him  his  chancellor;  he 
was  also  intrusted  with  the  education  of  the  King's  eldest  son, 
and  he  subsequently  became  archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

From  Fitzstephen's  life-like  description  of  London  in  this 
reign  we  obtain  a  picture  of  the  hardy  sports  which  then  formed 
an  important  portion  of  the  education  of  the  people,  as  it  did  of 
the  early  Britons.  To  the  north  of  the  City  were  pasture-lands, 
with  mill-streams ;  and  beyond  was  an  immense  forest,  with 
dense  thickets,  where  stags,  fallow-deer,  and  wild  bulls  had  their 
coverts  ;  and  through  this  district  the  citizens,  by  the  Charter  of 
Henry  I.,  had  liberty  to  hunt.  This  great  hunting-ground  is  now 
a  surburbof  the  metropolis  ;  and  as  the  Londoner  strolls  over  the 
picturesque  locality  of  "  Hamstead  Heath,"  he  may  encounter 
many  an  aged  thorn — the  lingering  indications  of  a  forest — and 
in  the  beautiful  domain  of  Caen  "Wood,  he  may  carry  his  mind's- 
eye  back  to  these  Anglo-Norman  sports  of  seven  centuries  since. 
Hawking  was  also  among  their  free  recreations.  Football  was 
their  favorite  game ;  the  boys  of  the  schools,  and  the  various 
guilds  of  craftmen,  having  each  their  ball.  In  summer  the 
youths  exercised  themselves  in  leaping,  archery,  wrestling,  stone- 
throwing,  slinging  javelins,  and  fighting  with  bucklers.  In  win 
ter,  when  "the  great  fen  or  moor"  which  washed  the  city  walls 
on  the  north  was  frozen  over,  sliding,  sledging,  and  skating  were 
the  sports  of  crowds,  who  had  also  their  sham  fights  on  the  ice, 
which  latter  had  their  advantages ;  for,  as  Fitzstephen  says, 
"  Youth  is  an  age  eager  for  glory  and  desirous  of  victory,  and  so 
young  men  engage  in  counterfeit  battles,  that  they  may  conduct 
themselves  more  valiantly  in  real  ones."  We  are  even  told  how 
the  young  Londoners,  by  placing  the  leg-bones  of  animals  under 
their  feet,  and  tying  them  around  their  anklqs,  by  aid  of  an  iron- 
shod  pole,  pushed  themselves  forward  with  great  velocity  along 
the  ice  of  the  frozen  moor;  and  one  of  these  bo?ie-skates.  found 
in  digging  Moorfields,  may  now  be  seen  in  the  British  Museum. 

The  Latinity  of  the  writers  during  this  reign  was  more  pure 
than  in  many  of  the  following  ones.  It  has  been  presumed  that 
the  monks  of  these  times  were  ignorant  of  classical  learning, 
from  Caxton  speaking  in  one  of  his  prefaces  of  Virgil's  ./Kneis 
as  a  story  then  hardly  known,  and  without  any  commendation  of 
the  poetry ;  but  it  appears  by  Fitzstephen  that  in  the  schools  of 
his  time,  the  scholars  daily  torqutnt  enthymemata,  an  expression 
which  shows  that  he  was  well  versed  in  Juvenal.  John  of  Sal 
isbury  was  as  well  verst-d  ami  as  ready  in  citing  the  Latin  clas 
sics  as  the  men  who  have  been  most  eminent  for  this  knowledge 


Progress  of  Education.  21 

in  modern  times.  The  Saxons  also  seem  to  have  made  a  dis 
tinction  between  the  Latin  which  was  spoken  by  some  of  the 
clergy,  and  what  was  to  be  found  in  classical  books. 

RISE  OF  ANGLO-NORMAN  SCHOOLS. 

Schools  and  other  seminaries  of  learning  were  zealously  estab 
lished  in  connection  with  the  cathedrals  and  monasteries  in  all 
parts  of  the  kingdom.  In  1179  was  ordered  by  the  council  of 
Laternn,  that  in  every  cathedral  should  be  maintained  a  head 
teacher,  or  sholastic,  as  was  the  title  given  to  him,  who,  besides 
keeping  a  school  of  his  own,  should  have  authority  over  all  the 
other  schoolmasters  of  the  diocese,  and  the  sole  right  of  granting 
licences,  without  which  no  one  would  be  entitled  to  teach  ;  and 
this  office  was  filled  in  many  cases  by  the  most  learned  persons 
of  the  time.  Besides  the  cathedral  schools,  there  were  others 
established  in  the  religious  houses ;  and  it  is  reckoned  that  of 
religious  houses  of  all  kinds  there  were  found  no  fewer  than  five 
hundred  and  fifty-seven,  between  the  Conquest  and  the  death  of 
King  John :  and  besides  these  there  still  existed  many  others 
that  had  been  found  in  the  Saxon  times.  All  these  schools, 
however,  appear  to  have  been  intended  exclusively  for  the  in 
struction  of  persons  proposing  to  make  the  church  their  profes 
sion  ;  but  mention  is  made  of  others  established  in  many  of  the 
principal  cities,  and  even  in  villages,  which  would  seem  to  have 
been  open  to  the  community  at  large ;  for  the  laity,  though  gen 
erally  excluded  from  the  benefits  of  learning,  it  is  presumed  were 
not  left  wholly  without  elementary  education. 

Fitzstephen  has  left  the  following  animated  picture  of  the  dis 
putations  of  the  schools  of  London  at  this  period  : 

On  festival  days,  the  masters  assemble  their  pupils  at  those  churches  where  the  feast 
of  the  patron  is  solemnized,  and  there  the  scholars  dispute,  some  in  the  demonstrative 
wav,  and  others  logically ;  some  again  write  enthymemes,  while  others  use  the  most  per 
fect  syllogism.  Some,  to  show  their  abilities,  engage  in  such  disputation  as  is  practiced 
among  persons  contending  for  victory  alone;  others  dispute  upon  a  truth,  which  is  the 
grace  of  perfection.  The  sophisters,  who  argue  upon  feigned  topics,  are  deemed  clever 
according  to  their  fluency  of  speech  and  command  of  language.  Others  endeavor  to  im 
pose  by  false  conclusions.  Sometimes  certain  orators  in  their  rhetorical  harangues  em 
ploy  ail  the  powers  of  persuasion,  taking  care  to  observe  the  precepts  of  the  art.  and  to 
omit  nothing  opposite  to  the  subject.  The  boys  of  the  different  schools  wrangle  with 
each  other  in  verse,  and  contend  about  the  principles  of  grammar,  or  the  rules  of  the 
p-rfect  and  future  tenses.  There  are  some  who  in  epigrams,  rhymes,  and  verses,  use 
that  trivial  raillery  n>  much  practiced  amongst  the  ancients,  frequently  attacking  their 
companions  with  Fescenine*  license,  but  suppressing  the  names,  discharging  their  scoffs 
and  sarcasms  against  them,  touching  with  Socratic  wit  the  feelings  of  their  school-fellows, 
or  perhaps  of  greater  personages,  or  biting  them  more  freely  with  a  Theoninef  ttoth. 
The  audience, 

Well  disposed  to  laugh, 
With  curling  nose  double  the  quivering  peals.  J 

*  Fesconnina  carmina,  (derived  from  Fescenina,  a  town  of  Etruria,)  rude  jesting  dia 
logue,  in  extempore  verse,  full  of  good-tempered  raillery  and  coan>e  humor.  —  Maclean's 
Notes  on  Horace. 

t  From  'Iheon,  a  malignant  wit,  and  a  poor  freedman  of  Rome,  in  Horace's  time. 

j  The  last  line  is  imitated  Irom  one  of  the  Satires  of  Persius: 

''Ingeminant  tremulos  naso  crispante  cachinnos." — Sat.  iii.  v.  87. 


22  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

The  practice  of  school-training  thus  vividly  described  by  Fitz- 
stephen  in  the  t\velfth  century  continued  to  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth. 

RICH  Alt  D  I.,  THE  POET  KING. 

Richard  L,  third  son  of  Henry  II,  born  at  Oxford  in  1157, 
lived  much  in  the  court  of  the  princes  of  Provence,  learned  their 
language,  and  practiced  their  poetry,  then  called  the  gciye 
science,  and  the  standard  politeness  of  that  age  ;  it  is  recorded  of 
him,  that  ''lie  could  skillfully  make  poetry  on  the  eye  of  fair 
ladies." 


Richard,  the  earliest  recorded  writer  of  French  verse  —  although 
nothing  of  his  poetry  remains  except  the  fame,  preserved  in  the 
writing  of  another  Trouvere  of  the  next  age  —  was  sent  by  his 
father  to  be  educated  at  Bayeux  ;  and  his  taste  for  poetry  is  said 
to  have  been  first  awakened  by  the  songs  of  the  land  of  his  an 
cestors.  According  to  Ritson,  Richard  is  never  known  to  have 
uttered  a  single  English  word,  unless  when  he  said  of  the  King 
of  Cyprus,  "  0  dole,  this  is  a  fole  Breton."  Many  great  nobles 
of  this  century  were  utterly  ignorant  of  the  English  language  : 
even  Longchamp,  Bishop  of  Ely,  chancellor  and  prime  minister 
to  Richard  I.,  according  to  a  contemporary  letter,  did  not  know  a 
word  of  English. 

CHURCH  SCHOOLS.  -  BENEFIT  OF  CLERGY. 

At  the  close  of  Richard's  reign,  about  the  year  1198,  there  was 
founded  at  Bury  St.  Edmund's  a  school  for  forty  poor  boys,  by 
Sampson,  Abbot  of  St.  Edmund's,  u  man  of  great  force  of  char 
acter,  who  had  risen  from  the  people  to  wear  a  miter  and  be  a 
Peer  of  Parliament  ;  and  in  his  greatness  he  did  not  forget  his 
lowly  origin,  for  he  is  recorded  to  have  said  to  one  suing  him  for 
a  benefice,  "  Thy  father  was  master  of  the  schools,  and  at  the  time 
when  I  was  a  poor  clerk,  he  granted  me  freely  and  in  charity  an 
entrance  to  his  school  and  the  means  of  learning  ;  now  I,  for  the 
sake  of  God,  do  grant  to  thee  what  thoti  dost  ask." 

The  same  good  work  which  Abbot  Sampson  accomplished  at 
Bury  was  being  accomplished  throughout  the  land  for  several 
centuries  before  him,  and  several  centuries  after  him,  so  that 
knowledge  became  the  special  inheritance,  not  of  the  high-born 


Progress  of  Education.  23 

and  the  rich,  but  of  those  of  low  estate.  It  is  true  that  for  the 
most  part  those  who  were  educated  in  the  chantries  and  schools 
attached  to  cathedrals  and  monasteries  were  the  recruits  whom 
the  Church  was  preparing  for  her  militant  service.  But  they 
were  taken  from  the  people,  and  they  lived  amongst  the  people, 
keeping  alive  in  the  hearts  of  the  community  the  humanizing 
influences  of  letters  and  of  religion.  Few  of  the  laity,  rich  or 
poor,  could  read ;  but  the  poor  saw  their  children  winning  the 
rewards  of  learning  without  favor  or  affection;  and  the  light  of 
truth,  though  mingled  with  error,  spread  from  the  altar  to  the 
meanest  hovel,  and  kept  our  fathers  from  barbarism.  The  old 
law  called  Benefit  of  Clergy  shows  how  gradually  the  ability  to 
read  extended  to  the  clergy.  In  the  early  times  clergymen 
claimed  the  privilege  of  being  exempt  in  certain  cases  from 
criminal  punishment  by  secular  judges.  They  appeared  in  cler 
ical  habit,  and  claimed  the  privilegium  clericale.  At  length,  the 
ability  to  read  was  considered  sufficient  to  establish  the  privilege, 
and  all  offenders  who  claimed  their  "  clergy  "  had  to  read  a  pas 
sage  from  the  Psalms,  which  came  to  be  humorously  called  "  the 
neck  verse."  This  was  no  merely  theoretical  privilege,  for  the 
ability  to  read,  absurd  as  it  may  appear,  saved  an  offender  in  the 
first  instance  from  the  full  penalty  of  his  crime.  In  the  Paston 
Letters  it  is  recorded  that  in  14G4,  Thomas  Gurney  employed 
his  man  to  slay  "my  Lord  of  Norwich's  cousin."  They  were 
both  tried  and  convicted  of  the  crime.  Thomas  Gurney  pleaded 
his  clergy,  and  was  admitted  to  mercy  as  "  clerk  convict ;"  the 
less  guilty  servant,  being  unable  to  read,  was  hanged.  But  the 
rank  of  Thomas  Gurney  gave  no  assurance  that  he  possessed 
any  knowledge  of  letters. 

RISE    OF    UNIVERSITIES. 

The  twelfth  century  was  the  age  of  the  institution  of  what  we 
now  call  Universities  in  Europe,  which  had,  however,  long  before 
existed  as  schools,  or  studia.  Oxford  and  Cambridge  had  un 
doubtedly  been  seats  of  learning  long  before  this  time  ;  but  there 
is  no  evidence  that  either  had  at  an  earlier  date  become  anything 
more  than  a  great  school,  or  held  any  assigned  rank  or  privilege 
above  the  other  great  schools  of  the  kingdom. 

Since  the  Conquest,  OXFORD,  ill  treated  by  William,  and  disre 
garded  by  his  son  Ilufus,  under  Beauclerc  again  became  the  object 
of  royal  favor,  and  numbers  flocked  to  her  academic  groves.  The 
predilection  of  Beauclerc  for  the  muses  made  him  partial  to  the 
neighborhood;  and  he  granted  some  privileges  to  the  place. 
In  his  time,  Robert  Pulleyn,  who  had  studied  in  Paris,  gave 
lectures  in  theology  at  Oxford ;  and  by  his  exertions  the  love 


21  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

of  science  was  greatly  revived,  and  the  number  of  students  in- 
creas^l.  Here  the  study  of  the  civil  law  began  at  this  period. 
Oxford  continued,  throughout  the  reign  of  Henry  II.,  to  follow 
t!i<-  line  of  studies  which  the  fashion  of  the  age  recommended; 
and  her  pupils  were  second  to  none  in  fortune  and  fame.  Thomas 
a  Becket,  who  had  studied  at  Bologna,  disdained  not  to  receive 
academical  honors  at  Oxford,  as  honors  were  then  conferred ; 
and  niter  his  promotion  to  the  highest  dignities  in  church  and 
state,  he  attested,  on  all  occasions,  his  kind  remembrance  of  the 
favors  which  he  had  received.  Richard  I.,  who  was  born  at 
Oxford,  is  stated  to  have  patronized  and  fostered  the  University. 
To  this  statement,  however,  Berington  demurs,  and  asks :  "  Be 
cause  Richard's  father  often  resided  at  Woodstock,  and  some 
times  vi.-ited  the  monks  at  Abingdon,  can  it  be  thought  that 
the  love  of  letters  attracted  him  to  the  spot,  as  on  grounds  not 
more  substantial  it  is  said  of  Beauclerc,  who  was  probably 
impelled  by  the  joys  of  the  chase  to  the  woods  of  Cumner  and 
Bagley  ?" 

CAMBRIDGE,  which,  from  the  ravages  of  the  Danes,  and  the 
insults  of  the  first  Normans,  had  long  lain  in  obscurity  and  neg 
lect,  revived  about  the  year  1109,  when  Joffrid,  Abbot  of  Croy- 
Lind,  intending  to  rebuild  his  monastery,  which  had  been  lately 
el">troyed  by  tire,  sent  Master  Gislebert,  with  three  other  monks, 
to  his  manor  of  Cottenham,  whence  they  went  every  day  to 
Cambridge,  where,  having  hired  a  barn,  they  gave  public  lee*- 
tares,  and  soon  collected  a  great  concourse  of  scholars ;  for  in 
the  second  year  after  their  arrival,  the  number  of  their  scholars 
from  the  town  and  country  increased  so  much  that  there  was  no 
house,  barn,  nor  church  capable  of  containing  them.  They  ac 
cordingly  dispersed  over  different  quarters  of  the  town :  brother 
Odo  read  grammar  early  in  the  morning,  to  the  boys  and  younger 
students ;  at  one  o'clock,  brother  Terricus  read  Aristotle's  Logic 
to  the  elder  class ;  at  three,  brother  William  gave  lectures  on 
Tully's  Rhetoric  and  Quintilian's  Institution;  while  Master  Gisle- 
b<Tt,  not  understanding  English,  but  very  ready  in  the  Latin  and 
French  languages,  preached  in  the  several  churches  to  the  people 
on  Sundays  and  holidays.  "  Thus,  from  this  small  source,  which 
has  swollen  into  a  great  river,  we  now  behold  the  city  of  God 
made  glad,  and  all  England  rendered  fruitful  by  many  teachers 
and  doctors  issuing  from  Cambridge  as  from  a  most  holy  para 
dise."  But  a  few  years  after  this  was  written,  during  the  war 
between  King  John  and  his  barons,  this  paradise  was  entered 
and  plundered  by  both  parties. 

Antony  a  Wood  has  preserved  a  few  Latin  verses  by  an 
English  student  at  Paris,  written  in  1170,  which  well  describe 


Progress  of  Education.  25 

the  spirit  of  display  and  love  of  expense  for  which  his  country 
men  were  already  noted.     The  translation  is  as  follows : 

Of  noble  manners,  gracious  look  and  speech, 
Strong  sense,  with  genius  brightened,  shines  in  each. 
Their  free  hand  still  rains  largess;  when  they  dine, 
Course  follows  course,  in  rivers  flows  the  wine. 

The  erection  of  Colleges  in  the  Universities  for  the  residence 
of  their  members,  as  separate  communities,  may  be  dated  from 
about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

University  College  is  the  foundation  of  King  Alfred  ;  but  the 
present  building  is  not  of  a  date  earlier  than  Charles  I.  The 
right  of  the  crown  to  the  visitation  of  the  college  rests,  however, 
on  the  ground  that  it  is  a  royal  foundation  through  Alfred ;  a 
claim  which  was  preferred  in  favor  of  the  royal  prerogative 
in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  so  lately  as  the  year  1726. 
The  University  of  Oxford  is  not  much  indebted  to  the  kings 
of  England  for  their  munificence  and  benefations,  if  we  except 
Alfred. 

From  the  Roll  of  the  Household  Expenses  of  Swinfield,  Bishop  of  Hereford,  in  1289, 
we  find  that  the  expenses  of  two  students  who  were  maintained  by  the  Bishop  at  the 
University  of  Oxford,  and  their  incidental  charges,  amounted  to  half  a  mark  a  week — 
a  considerable  sum,  if  valued  by  the  comparative  value  of  money  in  these  times.  "Six 
shillings  and  eightpence  weekly  for  two  scholars  was  a  sum  probably  not  far  short  of 
three  hundred  pounds  a  year  of  our  own  times.  It  is  pleasant  to  know,  from  this 
record,  that  the  great  men  of  those  days  had  an  affectionate  regard  for  youths  of  prom- 
i-e,  and  by  giving  them  the  best  education  opened  their  way  to  positions  of  public  use 
fulness." — Knight's  Popular  History  of  England. 

TROUBLED    REIGN    OF   KING   JOHN. 

John,  the  youngest  son  of  Henry  II.,  was  born  at  Oxford  in 
11G6  ;  but  of  his  education  we  have  no  record  of  interest. 

John  has  had  no  historian ;  so  that  we  possess  but  little  in 
formation  of  his  personal  character.  He  appears  to  have  shown 
little  taste  for  letters  or  for  any  other  refined  pursuits.  But, 
however  hated  by  other  classes,  John  seems  to  have  been  attached 
to,  and  a  personal  favorite  with,  the  seafaring  people,  much  of 
his  time  in  each  year  being  ordinarily  spent  on  the  coast,  as  ap 
pears  from  the  Close  and  Patent  Rolls  :  hence,  probably,  arose 
the  story  by  Matthew  Paris,  now  known  to  be  incorrect,  that 
John,  immediately  after  the  granting  of  Magna  Charta,  retired 
to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  there  passed  his  time  in  familiar  asso 
ciation  with  mariners  and  fishermen. 

Under  this  troubled  reign,  Latin  poetry  flourished  most :  it 
became  extremely  popular,  and  continued  to  exist  in  its  original 
vigor  long  after  the  style  of  the  most  serious  Latin  poets  be 
came  hopelessly  debased.  Very  little  Latin  prose  that  is  toler 
able,  was  written  after  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century. 


26  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


HKXUY    III. SETTLEMENT    OF    THE    ENGLISH    LANGUAGE. 

Henry  III.,  surnamed  of  Winchester,  from  the  place  of  his 
birth,  was  the  eldest  son  of  King  John,  and  was  born  in  1206 : 
he  succeeded  to  the  throne  in  his  tenth  year,  his  education  being, 
in  all  probability,  superintended  by  his  guardian,  William,  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  who  acted  as  Protector  of  the  Kingdom. 

With  the  thirteenth  century,  the  English  language  began  to 
be  cultivated ;  and  about  the  commencement  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  our  language  had  undergone  the  great  change  through 
the  introduction  of  Norman  words.  Many  French  and  Latin 
words  have,  indeed,  been  introduced  in  later  ages,  but  by  learn 
ing  or  caprice,  rather  than  by  the  convenience  of  familiar  inter 
course. 

An  able  critic  in  the  North  British  Review  thus  describes  this 
important  epoch  in  the  literature  of  our  country  : 

An  immense  distance  continued  to  exist  between  the  Normans  and  the  English  people 
even  «o  late  as  the  early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century.  A  1'oitevin,  who  was  prime 
minister  in  the  time  of  Henry  III.,  beinpasked  to  observe  the  great  charter  and  the  laws  of 
the  land,  answered — -'I  am  no  Englishman  that  I  should  know  thete  charters  and  these 
laws."  Robert  Grosse-tete.  bishop  of  Lincoln,  principal  chaplain  to  the  army  of  the  bar 
ons,  then  reckoned  only  two  languages  in  England,  Latin  for  men  ofletters.  and  French  for 
the  uneducated,  in  which  language  he  himself  in  his  old  age  wrote  pious  books  for  the  use 
of  the  laity,  making  no  account  <.f  the  English  language,  or  of  those  who  spoke  it.  The 
poets,  even  those  of  English  birth,  composed  their  verses  in  French;  but  there  was  a 
class  of  ballad-makers  and  romance-writers  who  employed  either  pure  Saxon,  which 
was  now  revived,  or  a  dialect  mixed  up  of  Saxon  and  French,  which  served  for  the 
habitual  communication  between  the  higher  and  lower  classes.  This  was  the  origin  of 
our  pre-ent  language,  which  arose  out  of  the  necessities  of  society.  In  order  to  be 
understood  by  the  people,  the  Normans  Saxoniztd  their  speech  as  well  as  they  cm-Id; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  be  understood  by  the  upper  classes,  the  people  A'or- 
manized  theirs  This  intermediate  idiom  first  became  current  in  the  cities,  where  the 
population  of  the  two  races  had  become  more  intermingled,  and  where  the  inequality  of 
conditions  was  less  marked  than  in  the  rural  districts.* 

About  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  a  great  many  poetical  and  imaginative 
works  appeared  in  this  new  language.  At  length,  the  French  language  was  entirely 
laid  aside,  not  only  in  the  courts  of  justice  but  also  in  the  high  court  of  Parliament,  as 
*ell  as  by  all  the  writers  who  addressed  themselves  to  the  middle  classes  and  the  lower 
populations.  We  still  indeed  retain  a  yenerable  relic  of  the  old  Norman,  in  the  custom 
of  giving  the  royal  assent  in  that  language:  the  formula  is — Le  Roy  It  veult — le  Roy 
s'avisera — not  even,  we  believe,  modernizing  the  orthography. 

ROGER   BACON,   AN    EDUCATIONAL    REFORMER. 

At  this  early  period  (about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  cen 
tury),  there  appeared  a  sagacious  advocate  of  reform  in  education, 
reading,  and  reasoning,  in  Roger  Bacon,  who  was  born  at  Ilches- 
ter,  in  Somersetshire,  near  the  year  1214.  Till  nearly  the  mid 
dle  of  the  last  century,  the  vulgar  notion  of  him  was  that  of 
the  learned  monk  searching  for  the  philosopher's  stone  in  his 
laboratory,  aided  only  by  infernal  spirits.  He  was  accused  of 
practicing  witchcraft,  thrown  into  prison,  and  nearly  starved ; 
and,  according  to  some,  he  stood  a  chance  of  being  burned  as 

*This  differs  from  the  view  taken  by  another  able  writer,  quoted  at  pp.  10-14. 


Progress  of  Education.     .  27 

a  magician.  He  was  educated  at  Oxford,  and  next  proceeded 
to  Paris,  then  the  first  university  in  the  world.  Returning  to 
Oxford,  he  applied  himself  closely  to  the  study  of  languages  and 
experimental  philosophy  ;  but  the  lectures  which  he  gave  in  the 
University  were  soon  prohibited,  and  he  was  accused  of  magic, 
a  charge  then  frequently  brought  against  those  who  studied  the 
sciences,  and  particularly  chemistry.  The  following  detached 
passages  of  his  Opus  Majus  no  doubt  contains  opinions  which 
its  author  was  in  the  habit  of  expressing  : 

Most  students  have  no  worthy  exercise  for  their  heads,  and  therefore  languish  and 
stupefy  upon  bad  translations,  which  lose  them  both  time  and  money.  Appearances 
alone  rule  them,  and  they  care  not  what  they  know,  but  what  they  are  thought  to 
know  by  a  senseless  multitude.  There  are  four  principal  stumbling  blocks  in  the  way 
of  arriving  at  knowledge  —  authority,  habit,  appearances  as  they  present  themselves  to 
the  vulgar  eye,  and  concealment  of  ignorance  combined  with  ostentation  of  knowledge. 
Even  if  the  first  three  could  be  got  over  by  some  great  effort  of  reason,  the  fourth  re 
mains  ready.  —  Men  presume  to  teach  before  they  have  learnt,  and  fall  into  so  many 
errors,  that  the  idle  think  themselves  happy  in  comparison  —  and  hence,  both  in  science 
and  in  common  life,  we  see  a  thousand  falsehoods  for  one  truth.  —  And  this  being  the 
case,  we  must  not  stick  to  what  we  heard  read,  but  must  examine  most  strictly  the 
opinions  of  our  ancestors,  that  we  may  add  what  is  lacking,  and  correct  what  is  erro 
neous,  but  with  all  modesty  and  allowance.  —  We  must,  with  all  our  strength,  prefer 
reason  to  custom,  and  the  opinions  of  the  wise  and  good  to  the  perceptions  of  the 
vulgar;  and  we  must  not  use  the  triple  argument:  that  is  to  say,  this  has  been  laid 
down,  this  has  been  usual,  this  has  been  common,  therefore  it  is  to  be  held  by.  For 
the  very  opposite  conclusion  does  much  better  follow  than  the  premises.  And  though 
the  whole  world  be  possessed  by  the  causes  of  error,  let  us  freely  bear  opinions  contrary 
to  established  usage. 

The  Opus  Majus  begins  with  a  book  on  the  necessity  of  ad 
vancing  knowledge,  and  a  dissertation  on  the  use  of  philosophy 
in  theology.  It  is  followed  by  books  on  the  utility  of  grammar 
and  mathematics  ;*  in  the  latter  of  which  the  author  runs  through 
the  various  sciences  of  astronomy,  chronology,  geography,  and 
music.  Bacon  was  also  long  reputed  to  have  been  acquainted 
with  gunpowder  and  the  telescope  ;  but  the  former  is  proved  to 
have  been  known  centuries  before  his  time  ;  and  though  he  dis 
covered  optic  lenses,  he  was  not  acquainted  with  the  principle  of 
the  telescope. 

EDWARD    II.  -  SCHOLARS    IN   HIS    REIGN. 

Edward  II.,  the  eldest  surviving  son  of  Edward  L,  born  at 
Carnarvon,  in  1284,  at  the  age  of  seven  years  lost  his  excellent 
mother,  Eleanor  of  Castile,  who  would  probably  have  guided  his 
education  better  than  his  less  stern  father.  Pie  was  of  a  kindly 
nature,  of  impulsive  character  and  passionate  will,  though  not 


the  Scots. 


for  at  seventeen  he  led  a  battalion  against 


*  Bacon  said  of  those  who  applied  themselves  to  the  study  of  mathematics  in  his 
time,  most  stopped  at  the  fifth  proposition  of  Euclid.  Hence  this  proposition  used  to 
be  called  the  Pons  Assininus,  or  Asinorum,  or  Asses'1  Bridge,  a  name  by  which  it  is  still 
known. 


28  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Among  the  most  distinguished  names  in  literature  and  science 
that  belong  to  the  reign  of  Kihvanl  I.,  is  Duns  Scotus,  a  Fran- 
ci-can  friar.  < -duratrd  in  a  convent  of  that  Order  at  Newcastle. 
He  became  a  Fellow  of  Merton  College,  Oxford,  and  professor  of 
theology  in  the  University,  his  great  fame  causing  incredible 
numbers  to  attend  his  lectures.  Although  he  died  at  the  early 
age  of  forty-three,  "  he  wrote  so  many  books  that  one  man  is 
hardly  able  to  read  them."  In  his  day  he  was  accounted  "  the 
Subtle  Doctor;"  but  his  learning  was  only  in  the  Divinity  of 
Schoolmen, far  removed  from  the  sound  and  useful  learning  which 
enables  the  scholar  to  discover  the  truth,  and  to  impart  the  knowl 
edge  of  it  to  others.  Scotus  having  dared  to  controvert  some 
positions  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  who  was  deemed  the  oracle  of  the 
Schools,.he  became  the  founder  of  a  new  sect  in  philosopy,  and  re 
vived,  with  inextinguishable  ardor,  the  old  disputes  between  the 
Realists  and  the  Nominalists.  The  Greeks  and  Persians,  it  has 
been  observed,  never  fought  against  each  other  with  more  fury 
and  rancor  than  these  two  discordant  sects.  Oxford  was  a  grand 
theater  of  their  contests.  Though  much  poetry  now  began  to  be 
written,  the  name  of  only  one  English  poet  has  descended  to 
posterity  :  Adam  Davy  or  Davie,  the  author  of  various  poems  of 
a  religious  cast,  which  have  never  been  printed.  There  is  still 
extant  a  curious  Latin  poem  on  the  battle  of  Bannockburn, 
written  in  rhyming  hexameters,  by  Robert  Baston,  a  Carmelite 
friar,  whom  Edward  carried  along  with  him  to  celebrate  his 
anticipated  victory;  but  who  being  taken  prisoner,  was  com 
pelled  by  the  Scotch  to  sing  the  defeat  of  his  countrymen  in 
this  jingling  effusion.  Bale  speaks  of  this  Baston  as  a  writer  of 
tragedies  and  comedies,  some  English;  but  none  of  them  are 
now  known  to  exist. 

EDWARD    III. HIS    ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Edward  III.,  the  eldest  son  of  Edward  II.,  was  born  at  Wind 
sor  in  1312.  Joshua  Barnes,  in  his  Life  of  this  renowned  king, 
a  closely-printed  folio  volume  of  900  pages,  gives  the  following 
"  small  taste  "  of  his  character : 

From  his  Birth  he  was  can  full  v  bred  up  to  all  thine*  that  seemed  necessary  or  proper 
for  I'rince*  to  excel  in;  so  that,  through  the  Vigor  of  his  Tart*,  being  rendered  very  apt 
to  imbibe  the  best  Principle*,  he  made  a  speedy  and  extraordinary  improvement  in  all 
Noble  Qualities;for  he  was  of  a  very  piercing  Judgment,  Sweet  Nature  and  Good  Discre 
tion,  and  considering  the  many  weighty  affairs  that  employed  his  whole  Life,  not  only- 
kind  to  the  Muses,  but  much  befriended  by  them,  as  appears  by  those  Learned  Writings 
of  which  Pi/sons  says  he  wan  the  Author.  When  he  was  capable  of  receiving  more  in 
genious  Kduc-ttion.  a  Man  of  Great  Reading,  Erudition  and  Honor,  was  provided  from 
Oxford  to  be  his  Tutor,  who  though  commonly  called  Richard  Bury,*  from  the  place  of  hi* 
Birth,  was  Indeed  Son  to  one  S.  Richard  Annf;trvile.  Knight,  but  was  afterwatd  by  this 
his  Royal  Pupil,  made  1'rivy  Sval  and  Treasurer  of  Kngland,  then  Dean  of  Wei's,  Lord 
Chancellor  of  England  and  Bishop  of  Durham. 

*  From  a  passage  in  Richard  of  Bury  it  might  be  inferred  that  about  1343.  none  but 
eccleciRHtics  could  read  at  all.  He  deprecates  the  puttiug  of  books  into  the  ham!-,  c  f 


Progress  of  Education.  29 

Edward  was  proclaimed  king  when  in  his  fifteenth  year,  and 
in  a  few  months  marched  at  the  head  of  a  large  army  against  the 
Scotch ;  so  that  his  boyhood  presented  few  opportunities  for  his 
intellectual  culture ;  but  the  glories  of  his  reign  of  fifty  years 
gave  "a  more  vigorous  activity  to  the  faculties  of  England." 
This  was  the  golden  age  of  chivalry,  of  architecture,  and  of  cos 
tume  ;  and  in  literature  the  age  of  Chaucer — his  tales  being  read 
alike  in  the  baronial  hall  and  the  student's  chamber.  The  uni 
versities  were  filled  with  scholars.  From  the  Anglo-Norman 
had  finally  been  involved  that  noble  tongue  upon  which  our  lit 
erature  has  been  built,  though  many  books  perfectly  intelligible 
to  us  were  written  before  this  reign.  In  1307,  Sir  John  Man- 
deville  wrote  a  narrative  of  his  Travels  in  English,  as  well  as 
in  French  and  Latin ;  and  Wickliffe,  the  great  Reformer,  deliv 
ered  his  earliest  appeals  to  the  people  on  questions  of  religion 
in  English. 

SCHOOLS  IN  THE  AGE  OF  CHAUCER. 

Chaucer,  traditionally  born  in  1328,  of  a  wealthy  and  respect 
able  family,  received  the  education  of  a  gentleman ;  he  is  believed 
to  have  studied  both  at  Cambridge  and  Oxford ;  he  was  well  ac 
quainted  with  divinity  and  philosophy,  and  the  scholastic  learning 
of  his  age,  and  displays  in  numerous  passages  an  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  astronomy,  and  most  of  the  sciences  as  far  as  they  were 
then  known  or  cultivated.  "  Chaucer's  language,"  says  Mr.  Bell, 
"  is  that  of  the  good  society  in  which  he  lived,  and  into  which  a 
large  accession  of  Norman  blood,  usages,  and  idioms,  had  been 
infused."*  Heretofore,  Norman-French  had  been  the  language 
of  education,  of  the  court,  and  of  legal  documents  ;  and  when  the 
Norrnanized  Anglo-Saxon  was  employed  by  literary  men,  it  was 
for  the  special  purpose,  as  they  were  usually  very  careful  to  men 
tion,  of  conveying  instruction  to  the  common  people.  But  now 
the  distinction  between  the  conquering  Normans  and  subjected 
Anglo-Saxons  was  nearly  lost  in  a  new  and  fraternal  national 
feeling,  which  recognized  the  country  under  the  name  of  Eng 
land,  and  the  people  and  language  under  the  simple  appellation 
of  English.  Scriveners  at  this  time  were  chiefly  employed  in 
copying  books.  Chaucer  thus  addresses  his  scrivener : 

Adam  Scrivener,  yf  ever  it  the  befalle 
Boice  or  Troiles  for  to  write  newe. 
Under  thy  long  locks  thou  mayst  have  the  scalle, 

laid  (laymen),  who  do  not  know  one  side  from  another;  and  in  several  place*,  it  seems 
that  he  thought  books  were  meant  for  the  "  tonsured  alone."     But  a  great  change  took 
place  in  the  ensuing  half  century;  and  he  can  be  scarcely  construed  strictly  even  as  to 
his  own  time. 
*  Annotated  Edition  of  the  English  Poets:  Life  of  Oiaucer. 


CO  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

But  after  my  making  thou  write  more  true; 

So  after  a  duv  I  more  thy  werke  renewe, 
It  to  c«»rreete,  and  eke  to  rubbe  ami  scrape, 
And  ul  is  thorow  thy  negligence  and  rape. 

Such  was  the  affectation  for  speaking  French  in  this  reign, 
that  it  became  a  proverb  —  "Jack  would  be  a  gentleman,  if  he 
could  speak  French."  It  was,  however,  often  very  corrupt,  in 
allusion  to  which  Chaucer  says  in  the  Prologue  to  the  Prioress's 
Tale: 

"  And  French  she  spak  ful  fayre  and  fety  saly 
After  the  schoole  of  Stratford  at  the  Bow, 
For  French  of  1'aris  wa>  to  her  unknowe." 

It  wa<,  nevertheless,  so  necessary,  that  Robert  of  Eglesfield,  who 
founded  Queen's  College  in  Oxford,  directed  by  his  statutes  that 
the  scholars  should  speak  either  French  or  Latin. 

Female  education  at  this  period  consisted  in  needle-work  (espe 
cially)  and  reading.  Boccacio  describes  a  wife  as  "young  and 
beautiful  in  her  person  ;  mistress  of  her  needle  ;  no  man-servant 
waiting  better  at  her  master's  table  ;  skilled  in  horsemanship  and 
the  management  of  a  hawk ;  no  merchant  better  versed  in  ac 
counts."  Chaucer  mentions  reading  and  singing  as  the  education 
of  little  children. 

SCHOLARSHIP    OF    EDWARD    THE    BLACK    PRINCE. 

Edward  the  Black  Prince,  the  eldest  son  of  Edward  III.,  was 
born  at  Woodstock  in  1330 : 

Nursed  at  the  bosom  of  his  mother  (Queen  Phillippa),  he  he  received  health  and 
strength  from  the  same  pure  Wood  that  had  given  him  existence:  the  gentle  impress  of 
her  own  sweet  mind  fixed  upon  her  child,  dur  ng  his  early  education,  thoie  kindly  v'r- 
tue.s  which  tempered  in  his  nature  the  fierceness  of  his  father's  courage.  Never,  per 
haps,  in  the  world's  history,  do  we  find  so  strong  an  example  of  the  qualities  possessed 
by  both  parents  being  blended  in  the  child,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Black  Prince,  in  whose 
heart  the  generous  and  feeling  nature  of  1'hillippa  elevated  rather  than  depressed  the 
indomitable  valor  and  keen  sagacity  of  Edward  III. — James's  L(te  of  the  Black  Prince. 

Holinshed  tells  us  that  Phillippa  herself  selected  for  the  Prince's 
tutor  a  person  of  whose  talents  and  virtues  she  had  possessed  the 
opportunity  of  judging ;  this  was  Doctor  Walter  Burleigh,  a  well- 
known  scholar  of  Merton  College,  Oxford,  who  had  been  ap 
pointed  almoner  to  the  Queen,  and  had  remained  from  that  time 
attached  to  her  household.  Simon  Burleigh,  "  a  near  kinsman  of 
the  Doctor's  (says  Barnes),  was  admitted,  with  other  young  gen 
tlemen,  to  be  school-fellows  with  this  noble  Prince."  Before  the 
Prince  was  seven  years  of  age  he  was  girded  by  his  father  with 
a  sword,  and  saluted  the  first  English  Duke  ;  and  immediately,  in- 
exercise  of  his  new  dignity,  he  dubbed  twenty  knights.  In  his 
thirteenth  year  he  entered  upon  the  chivalrous  training  of  the  time, 
which,  by  inuring  the  body  to  fatigue,  and  the  limbs  to  the  contin- 


Progress  of  Education.  31 

ual  use  of  arms,  gave  skill  and  groat  power  of  endurance  to  his  ac 
tive  and  robust  figure.  In  1343,  he  was  created  Prince  of  Wales, 
upon  which  the  knightly  feast  of  the  Round  Table  was  appointed 
to  be  held  in  an  ample  theater  near  Windsor  Castle  ;  at  the  age 
of  sixteen,  the  Black  Prince  led  an  army  to  the  field  of  battle, 
and  in  a  few  years  grew  to  be  "  the  flower  of  all  chivalry  in  the 
world." 

WINCHESTER  COLLEGE    FOUNDED    BY  WILLIAM    OF  WYKEHAM. 

In  the  reign  of  Edward  III.  lived  the  celebrated  William  of 
Wykeham,  who  was  born  at  the  village  of  Wykeham,  in  Hamp 
shire,  in  1324.  By  the  liberality  of  Sir  Nicholas  Uvedale,  gov 
ernor  of  Winchester  Castle,  the  boy  Wykeham  was  sent  to  "  the 
Great  Grammar-school  in  Winchester,"  originally  an  institution 
for  education  founded  before  the  Conquest.  Uvedale  next  pre 
sented  Wykeham  to  Edward  III.  for  his  skill  in  architecture.  In 
the  short  space  of  four  years  he  was  promoted  through  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  grades,  to  be  Bishop  of  Winchester  and  Lord  High 
Chancellor  of  these  realms.  He  had  already  commenced  the 
building  of  New  College  at  Oxford ;  and  in  the  following  year, 
with  the  view  of  taking  the  early  education  of  youth  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  monks,  "  it  was  his  admirable  thought  to  raise  a 
nursery  school  preparatory  to  his  cooperating  with  a  higher 
course  in  his  college ;  and  thus  to  raise  the  standard  of  education 
in  the  country,  to  that  stamp  and  character  which  has  ever  since 
(through  his  institution  and  the  copies  which  were  drawn  from 
it)  distinguished  the  English  gentlemen  amongst  the  families  of 
Europe."*  Thus  arose  Winchester  College,  the  scholars  of 
which  are  designated  to  this  day  Wykehamists.  The  novelty 
and  merit  of  the  plan  were  imitated  by  Chicheley,  at  All  Souls, 
Oxford ;  Henry  VI.  at  Cambridge  ;  and  Waynflete  at  Magdalene. 
"Twenty  years  before  his  hives  were  built  (1373),  Wykeham 
had  gathered  his  swarming  bees  under  temporary  roofs,  with 
masters  and  statutes :  which  with  parental  solicitude  he  watched, 
altered,  and  amended  from  time  to  time,  by  his  daily  experience. 
So  long  before  his  colleges  were  built  was  his  institution  effect 
ive."  Wykeham  died  in  1404,  at  the  age  of  eighty  years,  with 
the  respect  and  admiration  and  gratitude  of  all ;  and  like  the  spirit 
which  he  had  ever  sought  throughout  his  amiable  life,  "  length 
of  days  were  in  his  right  hand,  and  in  his  left  riches  and  honor." 
He  is  buried  in  Winchester  Cathedral :  "  beneath  the  spot  where 
the  school-boy  prayed,  the  honored  prelate  sleeps." —  Walcott. 

*  C.  R.  Cockerell,  R.A.— Chicheley  was  a  Wykehamist;  as  was  apparently  Waynflete, 
who  certainly  was  master  of  Wykeham's  school  in  1429. 


32  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

"NVykcliam's  College  buildings  stand  immediately  adjoining  the 
main  street  of  AViuche.-tiT,  a  city  of  kindred  quiet.  The  Middle 
Gate  Tower  has  under  three  canopied  niches,  the  Angelic  Salu 
tation,  and  the  Founder  in  prayer.  The  gateway  leads  to  a  truly 
noble  quadrangle  of  Wykeharn's  architecture.  On  the  left  side 
is  the  dining-hall,  with  an  oaken  roof  finely  carved  with  the  busts 
of  kings  and  prelates  ;  and  in  the  center  is  a  louver,  through  which 
the  smoke  ascended  in  olden  times,  when  the  scholars  gathered 
round  the  hearth  to  sing  and  listen  to  the  tales  of  the  chroniclers. 
Here  also  plays  were  acted  in  the  days  of  the  Tudors ;  the  boy- 
bishop  custom  was  observed  as  at  Eton ;  and  monarchs,  prelates, 
and  nobles  have  been  feasted.  On  the  south  side  of  the  quad 
rangle  is  the  chapel,  with  an  oaken  roof  of  fan  tracery  ;  the  large 
window,  forty  feet  in  height,  is  filled  with  painted  glass,  as  arc 
also  the  side  windows.  Next  are  the  cloisters,  surrounding  an 
area,  in  the  centre  of  which  is  the  former  chapel,  now  the  library. 
Beyond  is  the  Public  School;  it  was  built  in  1G87,  chiefly  by 
subscription  among  the  Wykehamists,  and  is  the  noblest  struc 
ture  of  the  kind  in  the  kingdom.  Upon  the  walls  are  inscribed 
in  Latin  the  admonitions  and  rules  for  the  government  of  the 
scholars ;  on  the  west  wall  are  painted  upon  a  large  tablet,  a 
miter  and  crozier,  the  rewards  of  clerical  learning ;  a  pen  and 
inkhorn  and  a  sword,  the  ensigns  of  the  civil  and  military  pro 
fessions  ;  and  a  Winton  rod,  the  dullard's  quickener ;  beneath 
each  symbol  is  its  apt  legend:  "Aut  disce,"  "Aut  discede," 
"  Manet  sors  tertia  cocdi." — "  Either  learn  :"  "  or  depart ;"  "  or  in 
the  third  place  be  flogged  ;"  underneath  is  the  flogging-place.  On 
the  east  wrall  is  a  corresponding  tablet,  bearing  the  School  laws, 
in  Latin.  The  Chamber  walls  are  carved  with  the  names  of 
many  an  illustrious  Wykehamist ;  but,  the  most  interesting  memo 
rial  is  the  Seventh  Chamber  and  the  adjoining  passage.  This 
"  was  the  ancient  school  wherein  Waynflete  taught,  and  was  called 
by  the  founder,  '•Magna  ilia  domus :'  the  stone  'books'  in  the 
embayed  windows  still  remain ;  it  could  accommodate  scarcely 
more  than  ninety  boys."  At  present,  the  foundation  scholars  at 
Winchester  are  limited  to  70 ;  and  the  commoners  are  in  general 
about  130.  The  College  and  its  Grammar  School  differ  little 
in  management  from  Eton.  Among  its  characteristic  customs  is 
the  chanting  of  the  Latin  song  u  Dulce  Domum,"  to  which  jus 
tice  cannot  be  done  in  any  English  translation.  It  is  sung  in 
College  Hall  on  the  six  last  Saturdays  of  the  "long  half"  before 
"  evening  bells ;"  and  at  the  July  festival : 

Nations,  and  thrones,  and  reverend  laws,  have  melted  like  a  dream, 
Yet  Wykeham's  works  are  Rreen  and  fresh  beside  the  crystal  stream; 
Four  hundred  years  and  fifty  their  rolling  course  have  sped, 
Since  the  first  surge-clad  scholar  to  Wykeham's  feet  was  led: 


Progress  of  Education.  33 

And  still  his  seventy  faithful  boys,  in  these  presumptuous  dayp, 
Learn  the  old  truth,  speak  the  old  words,  tread  in  the  ancient  vays; 
Still  for  their  d(aily  orisons  resounds  the  matin  chime — 
Still  linked  in  bands  of  brotherhood,  St.  Catherine's  steep  they  climb; 

Still  to  their  Sabbath  worship  they  troop  by  Wykehain's  tomb 

Still  in  the  summer  twilight  sing  their  sweet  song  of  home. 

Roundell  Palmer's  Anniversary  Ballad. 

Another  eminent  Wykehamist,  the  Rev.  Mackenzie  Walcott, 
M.A.,  has  commemorated  in  his  William  of  Wykeham  and  his 
Colleges,  the  glories  of  Winchester,  with  an  earnest  eloquence, 
and  affection  for  this  school  of  near  five  centuries,  which  accom 
panies  the  reader  through  every  page  of  Mr.  Walcott's  volume. 
It  is  delightful  to  see  with  what  pride  the  author  contemplates 

"the  success  of  a  school,  which  in  its  earliest  days  produced  Chicheley  and  Waynflete, 
the  founders  of  the  two  grandest  colleges  in  our  ancient  universities;  the  gentle  Warham ; 
Gocyn,the  reviver  of  the  Greek  language;  the  philosophic  Shaftesbury  and  profound 
Harris;  the  moralist,  Browne;  among  poets — some  of  them  distinguished  ornaments  of  the 
Augustan  age — Otway,  Young,  Collins,  Somerville,  Phillips,  Crowe;  the  learned  Bilson, 
Burgess,  Lowth,  and  meek  Ken;  the  graceful  Wotton;  among  judges,  Erie  and  Cranworth ; 
among  speakers,  Onslow,  Cornwall,  Sidmouth,  and  Lefevre;  among  seamen,  Keats  and 
Warren;  among  soldiers,  Lord  Guildford,  Seaton,  Dalbiac,  Myers,  and  their  gnllant  com 
panions  in  the  hard-fought  fields  of  the  last  war It  has  never  failed  in  con 
tributing  its  share  of  faithful  men  to  serve  the  country  in  Church  and  State;  it  has  well 
sustained  the  reputation  which  should  attach  to  the  only  ancient  institution  not  founded 
by  a  sovereign  which  boasts  itself  to  be  a  royal  college." — Preface  to  William  of  Wykt- 
ham  and  his  Colleges. 

WICKLIFFE    TRANSLATES    THE    BIBLE. 

As  Chaucer  was  the  Morning  Star  of  our  poetry  in  the  reign 
of  Edward  III.,  so  Wickliffe,  who  first  translated  the  Scriptures 
into  English,  has  been  called  the  Morning  Star  of  the  Reforma 
tion  ;  whilst  his  works  being  written  in  English,  and  dispersed 
among  the  people,  greatly  contributed  to  the  progress  of  the 
English  tongue.  John  Wickliffe  was  born  in  1324,  in  a  little 
village  in  Yorkshire,  was  educated  at  Oxford,  and  was  one  of  the 
students  who  attended  the  lectures  of  the  pious  Bradwardine  at 
Merton  College.*  At  that  time  he  was  in  the  flower  of  his  age, 
and  produced  a  great  sensation  in  the  university.  He  was  elected 
in  1364  warden  of  Balliol,  and  in  1365  warden  of  Canterbury 
College  also.  His  biblical  and  philosophical  studies,  his  knowl 
edge  of  theology,  and  his  penetrating  mind,  were  extraordinary. 
We  have  only  space  to  speak  of  his  translation  of  the  Scriptures, 
the  work  of  his  latter  years : 

Scholasticism  had  banished  the  Scriptures  into  a- mysterious  obscurity.  It  is  true 
that  Bede  had  translated  the  Gospel  of  St.  John;  that  the  learned  men  at  Alfred's  court 
had  translated  the  four  evangelists;  that  Elfric  in  the  reign  of  Ethelred  had  translated 
some  books  of  the  Old  Testament;  that  an  Anglo-Norman  priest  had  paraphrased  the 
Gospels  and  the  Acts;  that  Richard  Rolle,  "  the  hermit  of  Hampole,"  and  some  pious 
clerks  in  the  fourteenth  century,  had  produced  aversion  of  the  Psalms,  the  Gospels,  and 

*  Bradwardine  was  also  one  of  the  greatest  geniuses  of  his  time,  and  occupies  the  first 
rank  among  astronomers,  philosophers,  and  mathematicians.  His  Arithmetic  and  Ge 
ometry  have  been  published;  but  we  are  not  aware  if  bis  Astronomical  Tables  have  en 
joyed  this  advantage. 

3 


34  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

the  Epistles:    but  the««  rare  volumes  were  hidden,  like  theological  curio*itien,  in  the 

libraries  of  a  few  convents The  time  appeared  ripe  for  the  publication  of  a 

Bible.  The  increase  of  population,  the  attention  the  English  were  beginning  to  devote 
to  their  own  language,  the  development  which  the  representative  system  of  government 
had  received,  the  awakening  of  the  hunjim  mind — all  these  circumstance*  lavored  the 
Reformer's  design. 

Wickliffe  was  ignorant  indeed  of  Greek  and  Hebrew;  but  was  it  nothing  to  shake  off 
the  dust  which  for  ages  had  covered  the  I^tin  Bible,  and  translate  it  into  English  ?  He 
was  a  good  Latin  scholar,  of  sound  understanding  and  great  penetration;  but  above  al1, 
he  loved  the  Bible,  he  understood  it,  and  desired  to  communicate  this  treasure  to  others. 
l.ct  us  iuiapine  him  in  his  quiet  study:  On  his  table  is  the  Vulgate  text  corrected  after 
the  best  manuscripts;  and,  lying  open  around  him  are  the  commentaries  of  the  doctors 
of  the  Church,  esiecially  those  of  ^t.  Jerome  and  Nicholas  Syren»is.  Between  ten  and 
fifteen  years  he  steadily  prosecuted  his  task;  loomed  men  aided  him  with  their  advice, 
and  one  ot'th«'in,  N'icholas  Hereford,  appears  to  have  translated  a  few  chapters  for  him. 
At  last,  in  1380,  it  was  completed.— D'Aubiyne-s  History  of  the  Reformation. 

The  translation  being  finished,  the  labor  of  the  copyists  began, 
and  the  Bible  was  ere  long  widely  circulated  either  wholly  or  in 
portions.  It  was  welcomed  by  citizens,  soldiers,  and  the  lower 
classes ;  the  high-born  curiously  examined  the  unknown  book ; 
and  even  Anne  of  Luxemburg,  wife  of  Richard  II.,  having  learnt 
English,  began  to  read  the  Gospels.  She  did  more  than  this ; 
she  made  them  known  to  Arundel,  Archbishop  of  York,  Chan 
cellor,  who,  struck  at  the  sight  of  a  foreign  lady — of  a  queen, 
humbly  devoting  her  leisure  to  the  study  of  such  a  virtuous  book, 
commenced  reading  them  himself,  and  rebuked  the  prelates  who 
neglected  this  holy  pursuit.  *•  You  could  not  meet  two  persons 
on  the  highway,"  says  a  cotemporary  writer,  "  but  one  of  them 
was  Wickliffe's  disciple."  Yet,  all  in  England  did  not  equally  re 
joice  :  the  lower  clergy  opposed  the  enthusiasm.  .  The  Reformer 
was  violently  attacked,  yet  the  clamors  did  not  alarm  him ;  he 
did  not  stand  alone  :  in  the  palace,  as  in  the  cottage,  and  even  in 
parliament,  the  rights  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  found  defenders. 
A  motion  having  been  made  in  the  Upper  House  (1390)  to 
seize  all  the  copies  of  the  Bible,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  (who 
had  been  Wickliffe's  firm  friend  throughout  the  great  work,  and 
was  the  friend  of  Chaucer  and  of  Gower)  exclaimed :  "Are  we 
then  the  very  dregs  of  humanity,  that  we  cannot  possess  the 
laws  of  our  religion  in  our  own  tongue  ?"  The  texts  of  the  Bi 
ble  were  now  in  every  mouth,  as  they  were  re-echoed  in  the 
sermons  of  preachers,  in  churches,  and  open  places.  The  poor 
treasured  up  the  words  of  comfort  for  all  earthly  afflictions.  The 
rich  and  great  meditated  upon  the  inspired  sentences  which  so 
clearly  pointed  out  a  more  certain  road  to  salvation  than  could 
be  found  through  indulgences  and  pilgrimages.  Wickliffe  died 
in  peace,  in  his  rectory  at  Luttenvorth,  in  1384,  but  the  effect  of 
his  preaching  still  lives.  In  the  vestry  of  Lutterworth  church 
they  show  to  this  day  the  chair  in  which  sat  "  the  great  English 
Reformer." 


Progress  of  Education.  35 


EDUCATION     OF   RICHARD     II. HIS    PATRONAGE    OF    GOWER. 

This  distinction  of  literature  extended  through  the  reign  of 
Edward's  successor,  Richard,  the  son  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince, 
born  at  Bordeaux,  in  136G,  and  who  succeeded  to  the  throne  when 
only  in  his  twelfth  year.  His  government  and  education  were 
committed  to  Simon  Burleigh,  a  school-fellow  of  the  Black  Prince, 
who  had  by  him  been  made  Knight  of  the  Garter. 

In  a  manuscript  of  the  year  1385,  we  read  that  English  began 
to  be  the  language  into  which  school-boys  construed  their  lessons 
in  the  reign  of  Richard  the  Second ;  as  in  the  following  extract : 

"  oon  is  (sc.  reason)  for  children  in  scholes  agenst  the  usage  and  manner  of  all  other 
nations,  beeth  compelled  for  to  leave  hire  own  language,  and  for  to  construe  hire  lessons, 
and  here  things  in  Frenche,  and  so  they  haveth  sethe  Normans  come  first  into  Eng- 
londe;also  gentilmen  children  beeth  taught  to  sj  eke  Frensche,  from  the  time  that  they 
beeth  rockked  in  here  cradel.  .  .  .  And  uplondichemen  will  likne  hymself  togentyl- 
rnen,  and  sondeth  with  gret  besynesse  for  to  speak  Frenshe  for  to  be  told  of." 

One  of  the  bright  lights  of  this  reign,  Gower,  was  patronized 
by  Richard.  Gower  the  poet  was  born  a  few  years  later  than 
Chaucer,  though  he  is  believed  to  have  been  his  college  friend. 
Gower  studied  law ;  he  possessed  considerable  landed  property 
in  the  counties  of  Nottingham  and  Suffolk.  He  wrote  his  prin 
cipal  work,  the  Confessio  Amantis,  in  consequence  of  Richard  II. 
meeting  him  in  his  state  barge  on  the  Thames,  and  asking  him 
to  "book  some  new  thing;"  his  gravity  led  to  his  being  called 
"the  moral  Gower."  He  stands  half  way  between  the  minstrel 
of  Normandy  and  the  English  poet,  and  he  seems  to  have  trans 
ferred  the  faults  of  a  declining  literature  into  the  language  of  one 
newly  arisen.  "  Gower  prepared  for  his  bones  a  resting  in  the 
monastery  of  St.  Mary  Overie,  where,  somewhat  after  the  old 
fashion  he  lieth,  right  sumptuously  buried,  with  a  garland  on  his 
head,  in  token  that  he  in  his  life-daies  flourished  freshly  in  liter 
ature  and  science." 

Richard,  during  childhood  and  youth,  was  committed  in  suc 
cession  to  the  charge  of  several  guardians ;  and,  like  children 
(says  an  historian)  whose  nurses  have  been  often  changed,  he 
thrived  none  the  better  for  it.  He  did  good  or  evil  according  to 
the  influence  of  those  around  him,  and  had  no  decided  inclina 
tion,  except  for  ostentation  and  licentiousness.  In  his  reign,  lay 
men,  among  whom  Chaucer  and  Gower  are  illustrious  examples, 
received  occasionally  a  learned  education ;  and  indeed  the  great 
number  of  gentlemen  who  studied  in  the  inns  of  court  is  a  con 
clusive  proof  that  they  were  not  generally  illiterate.  The  com 
mon  law  required  some  knowledge  of  two  languages.  Upon  the 
whole,  we  are  inclined  to  think,  that  in  the  year  1400,  or  at  the 
accession  of  Henry  IV.,  the  average  instruction  of  an  English 


36  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

gentleman  of  the  first  class  would  comprehend  common  reading 
and  writing,  a  tolerable  familiarity  with  French,  and  a  slight 
tincture  of  Latin  ;  the  latter  attained,  or  not,  according  to  his  cir 
cumstances,  as  school  learning  is  at  present. 

HENRY    IV. HIS   ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Of  Henry  IV.  of  Bolingbroke,  eldest  son  of  John  of  Gaunt, 
and  born  in  the  ancient  castle  of  Bolingbroke,  in  Lincolnshire,  in 
13GG,  few  early  traits  are  recorded ;  and  as  his  father  was  a  sub 
ject,  nothing  of  material  interest  was  at  the  time  associated  with 
his  appearance  in  the  world.  Blanche,  his  mother,  survived  the 
birth  of  Bolingbroke  not  more  than  three  years ;  he  thus  early 
lost  the  benefit  of  maternal  care,  which,  with  his  father's  subse 
quent  life  of  profligacy,  may  account  for  the  excesses  of  Prince 
Henry.  Richard  II.  presented  him,  on  his  father's  second  mar 
riage,  with  a  costly  ring.  Froissart  reports  that  Henry  Boling 
broke  was  a  handsome  young  man  ;  and  we  read  that  he  excelled 
in  music.  It  was  his  custom  every  year,  on  the  Feast  of  the 
Lord's  Supper — that  is,  on  the  Thursday  before  Kaster — to 
clothe  as  many  poor  persons  as  equaled  the  number  of  years  he 
had  completed  on  the  preceding  birthday.  Henry  wa<  a  gallant 
young  knight,  often  distinguishing  himself  at  jousts  and  tourna 
ments,  and  in  the  Pell  Rolls  of  1401  is  recorded  the  payment  of 
101.  "to  Bartolf  Yanderlurey,  who  fenced  with  the  present  lord 
the  King,  with  the  long  sword,  and  was  hurt  in  the  neck  by  the 
said  lord  the  King."  Henry  was  of  an  active,  ardent,  and  en 
terprising  spirit ;  but  we  have  no  ground  for  believing  that  he 
devoted  much  of  his  time  and  thought  to  the  education  of  his 
children.  In  this  reign  was  built  a  library  in  Durham  College 
(now  Trinity  College),  Oxford,  for  the  large  collection  of  books 
of  Richard  of  Bury,  said  to  consist  of  more  volumes  than  all  the 
bishops  of  England  had  then  in  their  possession. 

Richard  of  Bury  had  bestowed  certain  portions  of  his  valuable  library  upon  a  com 
pany  of  scholars  residing  in  a  Hall  at  Oxford;  and  he  drew  up  "A  provident  arrangement 
by  which  books  may  be  lent  to  strangers,"  meaning  students  of  Oxford  not  In-lunging  to 
that  Hall.  The  custody  of  the  books  was  deputed  to  five  of  the  scholars,  of  which  three, 
and  in  no  case  fewer,  could  lend  any  books  for  inspection  and  use  only;  but  for  copying 
and  transcribing,  he  did  not  allow  any  book  to  pass  without  the  walls  of  the  house. 
And  when  any  scholar,  whether  secular  or  religious,  was  qualified  for  the  favor,  and  de 
manded  the  loan  of  a  book, the  keepers,  provided  they  had  a  duplicate  of  the  book,  might 
lend  it  to  him,  taking  a  security  exceeding  in  value  the  book  lent.  The  reader  may 
smile  at  the  caution;  but  we  have  known  some  possessors  of  books  in  our  own  day  adopt 
similar  rules. 

HENRY  V.  AT  QUEEN'S  COLLEGE,  OXFORD. 

Of  Henry  V.  of  Monmouth,  the  childhood  and  youth  are  chron 
icled  more  nearly  cotemporarily  than  those  of  his  predecessor. 
Henry  was  born  in  1387,  in  the  castle  of  Monmouth,  of  which 


Progress  of  Education.  37 

the  crumbling  ruins  are  now  a  few  vine-clad  walls,  washed  by 
the  Monmow.  From  this  castle,  tradition  says,  that  being  a 
sickly  child,  Henry  was  sent  to  Cornfield,  six  or  seven  miles 
distant,  to  be  nursed  there  ;  and  the  cradle  in  which  he  was  rocked 
was  shown  there  some  thirty  years  since.  In  the  Wardrobe  Ac 
counts  of  Henry's  father  we  find  an  entry  of  a  charge  for  a  "  long 
gown "  for  the  young  Lord  Henry ;  and  we  further  learn  that 
very  shortly  after  he  ascended  the  throne,  he  settled  an  annuity 
of  201.  upon  his  nurse,  Johanna  Waring,  "  in  consideration  of 
what  was  done  to  him  in  former  days."  In  the  records  of  the 
Duchy  of  Lancaster,  in  the  year  1397,  is  the  charge  of  Sd.  paid  "for 
harp-strings  purchased  for  the  harp  of  the  young  Lord  Henry  ;" 
12d.  "  for  a  new  scabbard  of  a  sword ;"  and  "  1,9.  Qd.  for  three- 
fourths  of  an  ounce  of  tissue  of  black  silk  for  a  sword  of  young 
Lord  Henry."  In  1396,  we  find  a  charge  of  "  4s.  for  seven  books 
of  grammar  contained  in  one  volume,  and  bought  at  London  for  the 
young  Lord  Henry."  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  so  early  as 
1399,  Henry  was  placed  in  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  under  the 
superintendence  of  his  half-uncle,  Henry  Beaufort,  then  Chancel 
lor  of  the  University ;  so  that  even  the  above  volume  of  grammar 
may  have  been  first  learned  under  the  direction  of  the  future 
Cardinal. 

In  the  old  building  of  Queen's  College,  a  chamber  used  to  be  pointed  out  by  succes 
sive  generations  m  Henry  the  Fifth's  *  It  stood  over  the  gate- way  opposite  to  St.  Ed 
mund's  Hall.  A  portrait  of  him  in  painted  glass,  commemorative  of  his  residence  there, 
was  scon  in  the  window,  with  an  inscription  (as  it  should  seem  of  comparatively  recent 
date)  in  Latin: 

To  record  the  fact  forever. 

The  Emperor  of  Britain, 

The  Triumphant  Lord  of  France, 

The  Conqueror  of  his  enemies  and  of  himself, 

Henry  V. 

Of  this  little  chamber, 
Once  the  great  Inhabitant. 

The  tender  age  of  Henry  at  this  period  does  not  render  the 
tradition  improbable ;  for  many  then  became  members  of  the 
University  at  the  time  they  would  now  be  sent  to  school.  Those 
who  were  designed  for  the  military  profession  were  compelled  to 
bear  arms,  and  go  to  the  field  at  the  age  of  fifteen ;  consequently, 
the  little  education  they  received  was  confined  to  their  boyhood. 
Hence  it  may  be  inferred  that  Henry  (though  perhaps  without 
himself  being  enrolled  among  the  regular  academics)  lived  with 
his  uncle,  then  chancellor,  and  studied  under  his  superintendence. 
It  is  nearly  certain  that  before  the  October  term,  1398,  Henry 
had  been  removed  to  King  Richard's  palace,  carefully  watched ; 
whilst  in  1899  he  accompanied  that  monarch  in  his  expedition 

*  Fuller,  in  hn  Church  History,  informs  us  that  Henry's  chamber  over  the  College 
gate  was  then  inhabited  by  the  historian's  friend,  Thomas  Barlow,  and  adda,  "  his  pic 
ture  remainelh  there  to  this  day  in  brass. 


38  School- Day s  of  Eminent  Men. 

to  Ireland.  Shortly  after  his  return,  on  his  father's  accession* 
he  was  created  Prince  of  Wales  ;  and  had  he  subsequently  become 
a  student  of  the  University,  its  archives  would  have  furnished 
evidence  of  the  fact ;  but,  as  tin1  boy  of  the  Earl  of  Derby,  or  the 
Duke  of  Hereford,  living  with  his  uncle,  the  omission  of  his 
name  is  not  remarkable.  In  all  probability  his  uncle  superin 
tended  his  general  education,  intrusting  the  details  to  others 
more  competent  to  instruct  him  in  the  various  branches  of  litera 
ture.  Among  his  college  associates  was  John  Carpenter,  of 
Oriel ;  and  Thomas  Rockman,  an  eminent  astronomer  and  learned 
divine,  of  Merton.  Among  other  pious  and  learned  persons  much 
esteemed  by  Henry  was  Robert  Mascall,  a  Carmelite  friar,  con 
fessor  to  his  father ;  and  Stephen  Partington,  a  popular  preacher, 
whom  some  of  the  nobility  invited  to  court.  It  is  impossible  to 
read  Henry's  letters,  and  reflect  on  what  is  authentically  recorded 
of  him,  without  being  impressed  by  a  conviction  that  he  had 
imbibed  a  very  considerable  knowledge  of  Holy  Scripture,  even 
beyond  the  young  men  of  his  day ;  whilst  chroniclers  bear  testi 
mony  that  "he  held  in  great  veneration  such  as  surpassed  in 
learning  and  virtue."  Here  we  take  leave  of  Henry,  since  an 
event  in  the  autumn  of  1398  turned  the  whole  stream  of  his  life 
into  an  entirely  new  channel,  and  led  him  by  a  very  brief  course 
to  the  inheritance  of  the  throne  of  England.* 

Prior  to  the  reign  of  Henry  V.,  specimens  of  English  correspondence  are  rare;  letters 
previously  to  that  time,  were  usually  written  in  French  or  Latin,  and  were  the  the  pro 
ductions  chiefly  of  the  great  or  the  learned.  The  letters  of  learned  men  were  verbose 
treatises,  mostly  on  express  subjects;  tho.-e  of  the  great,  who  employed  scribes,  resem 
bled,  from  their  formality,  legal  instruments.  We  have  nothing  earlier  than  the  15th 
century  which  can  be  termed  &  familiar  letter.  The  material,  too,  upon  which  these  let 
ters  were  written,  up  to  the  same  period,  w^s  usually  vellum;  very  few  instances,  indeed, 
occurring,  of  more  ancient  date,  of  letters  written  on  common  paper.  The  earliest  royal 
signature  known  in  this  country  is  the  signature  of  Richard  111. — EUis's  Original  Letters, 
1st  series,  p.  9. 

EARLY   PAROCHIAL    SCHOOLS SCHOOLS  IN  CHURCHES. 

Plain  Education  dates  from  the  fourteenth  century ;  reading 
and  writing  were  the  chief  branches,  but  children  were  also 
taught  grammar.  Parochial  grammar-schools  occur  in  the  fif 
teenth  century  ;  but  so  few  were  they,  and  so  low  was  the  gram 
mar-learning  taught  in  them,  that  in  1477,  several  clergymen  of 
London  petitioned  Parliament  for  leave  to  set  up  schools  in  their 
respective  churches,  not  only  to  check  schools  conducted  by  illit 
erate  men,  but  also  to  provide  for  the  great  demand  for  tuition, 

*  Selected  and  abridged  from  Henry  of  Monmouth.  By  J.  Endell  Tyler,  P.P.  It  is  a 
curious  fact,  not  generally  known  (nays  Mr.  Tyler),  that  Henry  IV.  in  the^/frjl  year  of  his 
reign  took  possession  of  all  the  property  of  the  I'rorost  and  Fellows  of  (Queen's  Col 
lege  (on  the  ground  of  mismanagement),  and  appointed  the  Chancellor,  the  Chief  Jus 
tice,  the  Master  of  the  RolK  and  others,  guardians  of  the  College.  This  is.  we  think, 
scarcely  consi>tent  with  the  supposition  of  his  son  being  resident  there  at  the  timo,  or 
of  his  selecting  that  college  for  him  afterward. 


Progress  of  Education.  39 

in  consequence  of  the  law  which  made  it  illegal  to  put  children 
to  private  teachers,  enacted  to  prevent  the  spread  of  Wicklivism, 
or  the  doctrines  of  Wickliflfe.  This  church  school  was  held  in  a 
room  at  or  over  the  porch  called  pannse.*  The  custom  is  alluded 
to  by  Shakspeare ;  and  we  find  it  as  late  as  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury,  for  John  Evelyn,  the  son  of  a  gentleman  of  fortune,  and 
born  at  Wotton,  in  1620,  states  in  his  Diary  that  he  was  not 
initiated  into  any  rudiments  till  he  was  four  years  old,  and  then 
one  Frier  taught  him  at  the  church  porch. 

EDUCATION  AT  HOME MUSIC. 

Education,  in  all  the  early  stages,  was  very  rarely  conducted 
at  home,  but  at  courts,  or  in  the  houses  of  nobles,  etc.  The  period 
of  infancy  and  boyhood  was  intrusted  to  women,  and  at  the  age 
of  eleven  years,  tuition  was  commenced  in  earnest.  In  royal 
houses,  the  parents  selected  some  veteran  and  able  soldier  of 
noble  family,  under  whose  roof  their  son  was  placed,  and  in 
whose  castle,  commencing  his  services  as  a  page,  he  received  in 
structions  in  the  exercises  and  accomplishments  befitting  his  con 
dition.  Thus,  Edward  the  Black  Prince  delivered  his  son  Rich 
ard,  afterward  Richard  II.,  to  Sir  Guiscard  d'Aigle,  as  his  mili 
tary  tutor.  Henry  IV.  intrusted  the  education  of  his  son  Henry, 
afterward  the  valorous  Henry  V.,  to  Sir  Thomas  Percy,  a  brave 
and  veteran  warrior ;  and  James  I.  of  Scotland  being  taken  pris 
oner,  and  confined  in  the  Tower  of  London  and  Windsor  Castle, 
received  there  an  excellent  education  through  Henry  IV.  of 
England,  who  placed  him  under  the  care  of  Sir  John  de  Pelham, 
constable  of  Pevensey  Castle,  a  man  of  note,  both  as  a  statesman 
and  a  warrior. 

James,  during  his  captivity  in  the  Round  Tower  of  Windsor  Castle,  composed  "The 
King's  Quair," — that  is,  the  King's  quire,  or  book.  It  is  a  serious  poem,  of  nearly  1400 
lines,  arranged  in  seven-line  stanzas  ;  the  style  in  great  part  allegorical ;  the  subject,  the 
love  of  the  royal  poet  for  the  Lady  Joanna  Beaufort,  whom  he  eventually  married,  and 
whom  he  is  said  to  have  first  beheld  walking  in  the  garden  below  from  the  window  of  his 
prison.  In  the  concluding  stanza  James  makes  grateful  mention  of  his — 

Ministers  dear, 

Gower  and  Chaucer,  that  on  the  steppes  sate 
Of  rhetorick  while  they  were  live  and  here, 

Superlative  as  poets  laureate, 

Of  morality  and  eloquence  ornate  ; 

and  he  is  evidently  an  imitator  of  the  great  Father  of  English  poetry.  The  poem,  too,  must 
be  regarded  as  written  in  English  rather  than  in  Scotch,  though  the  difference  between  the 
two  dialects  was  not  so  great  at  this  early  date  as  it  afterward  became ;  and  although  James, 
who  was  in  his  eleventh  year  when  he  was  carried  away  to  England  in  1405,  by  Henry  IV., 
may  not  have  altogether  avoided  the  peculiarities  of  his  native  idiom. —  G.  L.  Craik,  M.A. 

*  The  Scrgeant-at-law  in  Chaucer's  Canterbury  Pilgrims  had  been  at  parvise.  The 
choristers  of  Norwich  Cathedral  were  formerly  taught  in  the  parvise,  i.  e.,  the  porch 
The  chamber  over  a  porch  in  some  churches  may  have  been  the  school  msant — as  at 
Doncaster  Church,  and  at  Shorborne  Abbey  Church.  "  Responsions,"  or  the  preliminary 
examinations  at  Oxford,  are  said  to  be  held  in  parvise,  i  e.  in  the  porch,  or  antecnamuor 
before  the  schools.  Wotton  Church  porch  has  not  a  room. 


40  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

The  Kinp'n  Qnair  contains  poetry  superior  to  any  except  that  of  Oinuccr,  produced  in 
England  before-  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Two  other  poems  of  considerable  length,  in  a  hu 
morous  stylo,  have  also  been  attributed  to  James  I.— '-I'eeblesto  the  Flay, "and  Christ's  Kirk 
on  the  Green"—  both  in  the  .^cottish  dialect ;  but  they  are  more  probably  the  productions 
•f  his  equally  gifted  and  equally  unfortunate  descendant,  Jauies  V..  slain  at  Floddtn,  in 
1513.  Chalmers,  however,  assigns  the  former  to  James  I. 

Among  the  elegant  accomplishments  which  were  blended  with 
the  early  tuition  of  both  sexes,  we  should  not  omit  to  notice 
music,  which  was  intended  to  render  the  learner  a  delightful 
companion  in  the  hall  at  home,  as  his  skill  in  warlike  exercises 
was  calculated  to  make  him  a  formidable  enemy  in  the  field. 
The  science  of  music,  both  instrumental  and  vocal ;  the  composi 
tion  and  recitation  of  ballads,  roundelayes,  and  other  minor 
pieces  of  poetry ;  and  an  acquaintance  with  the  romances  and 
popular  poems  of  the  times,  were  all  essential  branches  in  the 
system  of  education  which  was  adopted  in  every  castle  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  The  brave  and  accomplished 
military  leader,  Sir  John  Chandos,  sang  sweetly,  and  solaced  his 
master,  Kdward  III.  on  a  voyage,  by  his  ballads ;  and  the  Count 
de  Foix,  a  celebrated  hero,  frequently  requested  his  secretaries, 
in  the  intervals  of  severer  occupation,  to  recreate  themselves  by 
chanting  songs  and  roundelayes.  Again,  Churchmen  studied 
music  by  profession  ;  and  the  law  students  at  the  Inns  of  Court 
learned  singing,  and  all  kinds  of  music.  A  few  of  our  early  sov 
ereigns  were  skilled  in  music:  Richard  II.  is  known  to  have  as 
sisted  at  divine  service,  and  to  have  chanted  a  collect-prayer ; 
Henry  IV.  is  described  as  of  shining  talents  in  music ;  and  Stow 
tells  us  that  Henry  V.  "  delighted  in  songs,  meters,  and  musical 
instruments." 

We  obtain  an  interesting  glimpse  of  Female  Education  from  a  curious  book  of  Adi-ice  to 
Latfits,  written  in  the  year  1371.  At  this  time,  in  the  upper  ranks,  the  education  of  fe 
males  was  generally  conducted  in  the  monasteries,  or  in  the  family  of  some  relative  or 
friend,  if  possible,  of  superior  rank  ;  the  latter  from  it*  being  thought  that  abroad  daughters 
would  be  more  likely  to  form  advantageous  connections  than  at  home.  Under  all  these 
forms,  however,  the  character  of  the  education  seems  to  have  been  nearly  the  same.  It 
consisted  of  needle-work,  confectionery  (or  the  art  of  preserving  fruits,  etc.),  gurgery  (or  a 
knowledge  of  the  healing  art.)  and  the  rudiments  of  church  music  ;  to  which,  in  an  edu 
cation  at  a  monastery,  was  generally  added  the  art  of  reading;  The  prejudices  of  tho 
tunes,  and  particularly  of  the  male  sex,  were  opposed  to  any  higher  degree  of  cultivation  of 
the  mind:  arising,  probably,  from  a  suspicion,  that  it  might  render  women  an  overmatch 
for  their  admirers.  Nor  is  it  certain  that  the  reading  of  the  time  was  beneficial.  "  Instead 
of  reading  bokes  of  wisdom  and  science."  says  the  author  of  the  Atti'iet,  "  they  studye  in 
nought  but  the  bokes  that  speak  of  love's  fables,  and  other  worldlie  vanities  ;"  he  also 
considers  writing  as  dangerous  and  unnecessary,  and  thinks  it  better  "  if  women  can  nought 
of  it."  lie  appears  to  have  set  two  priests  and  two  clerks  to  select  a  book  of  "  ensamples,'' 
or  extracts  from  the  Uible,  the  acts  of  Kings,  tht  chronicles  of  France,  Greece,  and  England. 
In  speaking  of  female  manners,  one  of  the  first  faults  which  he  corrects,  and  which  was 
natural  to  ignorant  and  uneducated  girls,  was  that  of  levity.  Among  other  points,  he  fixe* 
on  their  conduct  at  mass,  at  which  the  grossest  irreverence  and  disorder  are  known  to  have 
prevailed.  The  church,  during  the  celebration  of  the  service,  seems  to  have  been  an  estab 
lished  scene  of  gossip  and  flirtation.  The  men  came  with  their  hawks  and  dogs,  walking 
to  and  fro  to  converse  with  their  friends,  to  make  bargains  and  appointments!  and  to  show 
their  splendid  coat*. 


Progress  of  Education.  41 


CHILDHOOD    AND    YOUTH    OF    HENRY   THE    SIXTH. 

It  has  been  shrewdly  observed  that  there  are  few  instances  of 
kings  who  ascend  the  throne  at  a  very  early  age  answering  the 
expectations  of  their  people.  In  our  own  history  Richard  II. 
and  Henry  VI.  are  striking  instances  of  this  remark  ;  for  which 
there  seems  to  be  an  obvious  reason,  viz,  that  a  minor  king  re 
ceived  generally  a  worse  education  than  he  who  is  only  destined 
to  a  throne. 

Henry  VI.,  called  of  Windsor,  from  having  been  born  there  in 
1421,  was  not  quite  nine  months  old  when  the  death  of  his  father, 
Henry  V.,  left  him  King  of  England.  Fabian  relates  this  extra 
ordinary  instance  of  the  adulation  paid  to  this  minor  sovereign : 
"  Henry  VI.,  when  but  eight  months  old,  sat  in  his  mother's  lap  in 
the  parliament  chamber ;  and  the  speaker  made  a  famous  prce- 
position,  in  which  he  said  much  of  the  providence  of  God,  who 
had  endowed  the  realm  with  the  presence  of  so  toward  a  prince 
and  sovereign  governor."  His  childhood  was  passed  at  Windsor 
Castle.  In  accordance  with  the  will  of  his  dying  father,  the  boy 
Henry,  when  six  years  old,  was  placed  under  the  tutelage  of 
Richard  de  Beauchamp,  Earl  of  Warwick,  the  companion  in  arms 
of  Henry  V.  This  appointment  was  made  under  the  authority 
of  the  Council :  Warwick  was  to  instruct  his  pupil  in  all  things 
worthy  to  be  known,  nurturing  him  in  the  love  and  fear  of  his 
Creator,  and  in  hatred  of  all  vice.  The  Earl  held  this  office  till 
the  King  was  sixteen  :  his  discipline  was  very  strict ;  for  the  pupil 
was  not  to  be  spoken  to,  unless  in  the  presence  of  Warwick,  or  of 
the  four  knights  appointed  to  be  about  his  person  ;  "  as,"  says  the 
entry  in  the  Rolls  of  Parliament,  "  the  King,  by  the  speech  of 
others  in  private,  has  been  stirred  by  some  from  his  learning,  and 
spoken  to  of  divers  matters  not  behoveful."  The  Earl  appears 
to  have  complained  to  the  Council  of  the  King's  misconduct,  for 
they  promised  to  assist  him  in  chastising  his  royal  pupil  for  his 
defaults.  Warwick  applied  for  this  aid  as  protection  against  the 
young  Henry's  displeasure  and  indignation,  "as  the  King  is 
grown  in  years,  in  stature  of  his  person,  and  in  conceit  of  his 
high  authority."  Severe  corporal  punishment  was,  it  appears, 
considered  the  most  efficient  instrument  of  good  education  at  this 
period ;  and  Warwick,  doubtless,  belashed  the  young  King. 

How  much  of  the  fire  of  the  Platnagenets  was  trodden  out  of  Henry  VI.  by  the  severities 
of  his  early  discipline  cannot  now  he  estimated.  He  was  born  to  a  most  unhappy  position  ; 
but  it  is  satisfactory  to  believe  that  his  hard  lot  was  solaced  by  that  religious  trust  which 
lightens  the  burthens  of  the  wretched,  whether  on  a  throne  or  in  a  dungeon.  The  Earl 
of  Warwick,  who,  like  many  other  leaders  of  chivalry,  was  an  enthusiastic  in  the  efficiency 
of  vows  and  pilgrimages,  may  have  injured  his  pupil  by  that  strong  feeling  of  ceremonial 
devotion  which  caused  him  long  to  be  regarded  as  a  saint.  To  a  right  direction  of  that 


42  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

pietr,  we  ow<\  however,  the  noble  foundations  of  Eton  and  Kinfc'd  Collotre,  Tamhridge,— 
worthy  monuments  which  still  call  upon  us  to  respect  the  memory  of  the  most  meek  and 
most  unfortunate-  of  king's  —Knight  s  Popular  History  of  England. 

Meanwhile,  the  scholastic  training  of  the  young  King  was  in 
trusted  to  bis  great  uncle,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  better 
known  as  Cardinal  Beaufort ;  and  under  his  tuition,  Henry 
became  an  accomplished  scholar  in  all  the  learning  of  the  age ; 
as  well  as  "  the  truest  Christian  gentleman  that  ever  sat  upon  a 
throne." 

The  statutes  of  St.  Mary's  College,  Oxford,  in  this  reign,  show 
how  great  must  have  been  the  inconveniences  and  impediments 
to  study  in  those  days  from  the  scarcity  of  books  :  "  Let  no  scholar 
occupy  a  book  in  the  library  over  one  hour,  or  two  hours  at  most, 
so  that  others  shall  be  hindered  from  the  use  of  the  same." 
Still  there  was  a  great  number  of  books  at  an  early  period  of  the 
Church,  when  one  book  was  given  out  by  the  librarian  to  each 
of  a  religious  fraternity  at  the  beginning  of  Lent,  to  be  read  dil 
igently  during  the  year,  and  to  be  returned  the  following  Lent. 
Books  were  first  kept  in  chests,  and  next  chained  to  the  desks, 
lest  their  rarity  and  value  might  tempt  those  who  used  them ; 
and  it  was  a  very  common  thing  to  write  in  the  first  leaf  of  a 
book,  "  Cursed  be  he  who  shall  steal  or  tear  out  the  leaves,  or 
in  any  way  injure  this  book ;"  an  anathema  which,  in  a  modified 
form,  we  have  seen  written  in  books  of  the  present  day. 

HENRY    THE    SIXTH    FOUNDS    ETON    COLLEGE,  AND    KING'S 
COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE. 

Hall,  the  chronicler,  when  speaking  of  the  causes  which  led 
Henry  VI.  to  found  Eton  College,  and  King's  College,  Cam 
bridge,  says  of  him :  "  he  was  of  a  most  liberal  mind,  and  espe 
cially  to  such  as  loved  good  learning ;  and  those  whom  he  saw 
profiting  in  any  virtuous  science,  he  heartily  forwarded  and  em 
braced."  An  ingenious  writer  of  our  own  time  has,  however, 
more  correctly  characterized  the  young  King's  motive:  "still 
stronger  in  Henry's  mind  was  the  desire  of  marking  his  gratitude 
to  God  by  founding  and  endowing  some  place  of  pious  instruc 
tion  and  Christian  worship."*  Henry  seems  principally  to  have 
followed  the  magnificent  foundations  of  William  of  Wykeham  at 
AVinchester  and  Oxford ;  resolving  that  the  school  which  he 
founded  should  be  connected  with  a  college  in  one  of  the  Uni 
versities,  whither  the  best  of  the  foundation  scholars  of  his  school 
should  proceed  to  complete  their  education,  and  where  a  perma 
nent  provision  should  be  made  for  them.  Standing  upon  the 
north  terrace  of  Windsor  Castle,  near  Wykeham's  tower,  and 

*  Memoirs  of  Eminent  Etonians.     Hy  E.  S.  Creasy,  il.A. 


Progress  of  Education.  43 

looking  toward  the  village  of  Eton,  upon  the  opposite  bank  of 
the  silver- winding  Thames,  we  can  imagine  the  association  to 
have  first  prompted  the  devout  King's  design — in  the  words  of 
the  Charter,  "  to  found,  erect,  and  establish,  to  endure  in  all  fu 
ture  time, 

A  College  consisting  of  and  of  the  number  of  one  provost  and  ten  priests,  four  clerks  and 
six  chorister  boys,  who  are  to  serve  daily  there  in  the  celebration  of  divine  worship,  and  of 
twenty -five  poor  and  indigent  scholars  who  are  to  learn  grammar;  and  also  of  twenty -five  poor 
and  infirm  men,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  pray  there  continually  for  our  health  and  wel 
fare  so  long  as  we  live,  and  for  our  soul  when  we  shall  have  departed  this  life,  and  for  the 
souls  of  the  illustrious  Prince,  Henry  our  father,  late  King  of  England  and  France  ;  also 
of  the  Lady  Katherine  of  most  noble  memory,  late  his  wife,  our  mother  ;  and  for  the  souls 
of  all  our  ancestors  and  of  all  the  faithful  who  are  dead:  (consisting)  also  of  one  master  or 
teacher  in  grammar,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  instruct  in  the  rudiments  of  grammar  the 
said  indigent  scholars  and  all  others  whatsoever  who  may  come  together  from  any  part  of 
our  Kingdom  of  England  to  the  said  College,  gratuitously  and  without  the  exaction,  of 
money  or  any  other  thing." 

The  works  were  commenced  in  1441,  with  the  chapel  of  the 
College;  and  to  expedite  the  building,  workmen  were  "pressed" 
from  every  part  of  the  realm.  The  freemasons  received  3s.  a 
week  each,  the  stone-masons  and  carpenters  3s. ;  plumbers,  saw 
yers,  tilers,  etc.,  Qd.  a  day,  and  common  laborers  4d.  The 
grant  of  arms  expresses  this  right  royal  sentiment :  "  If  men  are 
ennobled  on  account  of  ancient  hereditary  wealth,  much  more  is 
he  to  be  preferred  and  styled  truly  noble,  who  is  rich  in  the 
treasures  of  the  sciences  and  wisdom,  and  is  also  found  diligent 
in  his  duty  towards  God."  Henry  appointed  Waynflete  first  pro 
vost,  who,  with  five  fellows  of  Winchester,  and  thirty-five  of  the 
scholars  of  that  College,  became  the  primitive  body  of  Etonians, 
in  1443.  The  works  of  the  Chapel  were  not  completed  for  many 
years ;  and  the  other  parts  of  the  College  were  unfinished  until 
the  commencement  of  Henry  the  Eighth's  reign. 

Eton,  in  its  founder's  time,  was  resorted  to  as  a  place  of  edu 
cation  by  the  youth  of  the  higher  orders,  as  well  as  by  the  class 
for  whose  immediate  advantage  the  benefits  of  the  foundation 
were  primarily  designed.  Those  students  not  on  the  foundation 
were  lodged  at  their  relations'  expense  in  the  town  (oppidum)  of 
Eton,  and  thence  called  Oppidans.  The  scholars  on  the  founda 
tion  (since  called  Colle-gers)  were  lodged  and  boarded  in  the 
College-buildings,  and  at  the  College  expense.  There  are  two 
quadrangles,  built  chiefly  of  red  brick :  in  one  are  the  school 
and  the  chapel,  with  the  lodgings  for  the  scholars ;  the  other  con 
tains  the  library,  the  provost's  house,  and  apartments  for  the  Fel 
lows.  The  chapel  is  a  stately  stone  structure,  and  externally 
very  handsome.  The  architecture  is  Late  Perpendicular,  and 
a  good  specimen  of  the  style  of  Henry  the  Seventh's  reign.  In 
the  center  of  the  first  quadrangle  is  a  bronze  statue  of  Henry 
VI. ;  and  in  the  chapel  another  statue,  of  marble,  by  John  Ba- 


44  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

con.  The  foundation  scholars  seem  to  have  been  first  placed  in 
two  large  chambers  on  the  ground  floor,  three  of  the  upper  boys 
in  each ;  they  had  authority  over  the  others,  and  were  responsi 
ble  for  good  conduct  being  maintained  in  the  dormitory.  Sub 
sequently  was  added  "the  Long  Chamber"  as  the  common  dor 
mitory  of  all  the  scholars.  Dinner  and  supper  were  provided 
daily  for  all  the  members  of  the  College ;  and  every  scholar  re 
ceived  yearly  a  stated  quantity  of  coarse  cloth,  probably  first 
made  up  into  clothing,  but  it  has  long  ceased  to  be  so  used. 

The  King's  Scholars  or  Collegers  are  distinguished  from  oppi 
dans  by  a  black  cloth  gown.  The  boys  dined  at  eleven,  and 
supped  at  seven ;  there  being  only  two  usual  meals. 

King  Henry  is  recorded  to  have  expressed  much  anxiety  for 
his  young  incipient  Alumni.  One  of  his  chaplains  relates  that — 

When  King  Henry  met  some  of  the  students  in  Windsor  Castle,  whither  they  sometimes 
used  to  go  to  visit  the  King's  servant?,  whom  they  knew,  on  ascertaining  who  they  were,  he 
admonished  them  to  follow  the  path  of  virtue,  and  besides  his  words,  would  give  them  money 
to  win  over  their  good-will,  saying,  "  Be  good  boys  ;  be  gentle  and  docile,  and  servants  of 
the  Lord.;i  (sitis  boni  pueri,"niites  et  docibiles,  et  servi  Domini. 

The  progress  of  the  buildings  was  greatly  checked  by  the 
troubles  toward  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VI. ;  and  his 
successor,  Edward  IV.,  not  only  deprived  Eton  of  large  portions 
of  its  endowments,  but  obtained  a  bull  from  Pope  Pius  II.  for 
disposing  of  the  College,  and  merging  it  in  the  College  of  St. 
George  at  Windsor ;  but  Provost  Westbury  publicly  and  solemnly 
protested  against  this  injustice,  the  bull  was  revoked,  and  many 
of  the  endowments  were  restored,  though  the  College  suffered 
severely.  The  number  on  the  foundation  consisted  of  a  provost 
and  a  vice-provost,  G  fellows,  2  chaplains,  10  choristers,  the  up 
per  and  lower  master,  and  the  70  scholars.  The  buildings  were 
continued  during  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.,  and  the  early  years 
of  Henry  the  Eighth,  whose  death  saved  Parliament  from  extin 
guishing  Eton,  which  was  then  confirmed  to  Edward  VI. 

Among  the  Paston  Letters  is  one  written  in  1467,  by  "  Master  Willam  Paston  at  Eton,  ro 
his  Worshipful  Brother,  .John  I'aston,  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  8rf  in  a  letter,  to  buy 
a  pair  of  slippers ;  i  3*.  4rf.  to  pay  for  his  board,  and  thanking  him  for  121b.  of  Figgs  and  Sib. 
of  Raisins  which  he  was  expecting  by  theftrrt  barge;  he  then  narrates  how  he  hail  fallen 
in  love  with  a  young  gentlewoman  to  whom  he  had  been  introduced  bj  his  hostess,  or 
dame  ;  and  he  concludes  with  a  specimen  of  his  skill  in  Latin  versification. 

A.  MS  document  in  Corpus  ChrLsti  College,  Cambridge,  shows  the  general  system 
of  the  school,  the  discipline  kept  up,  and  the  books  read  in  the  various  forms,  about  the 
year  156').  The  holidays  and  customs  are  also  enumerated  ;  great  encouragement  was  then 
shown  fo  Latin  versification  (always  the  pride  of  Kton),  and  occasionally  to  English,  among 
the  students :  care  was  taken  to  teach  the  younger  boys  to  write  a  good  hand.  The  boys 
rose  at  nve  to  the  loud  call  of  '•  Surgite  ;"  they  related  a  prayer  in  alternate  verses,  as  they 
dressed  themselves,  and  made  their  beds,  and  each  swept  the  part  of  the  chamber  close  to 
his  bed.  They  then  went  in  a  row  to  wash,  and  then  to  school,  where  the  under-master 
read  prayers  at  six  ;  then  the  prirponitor  noted  absentees,  and  one  examined  the  students' 
faces  and  hands,  and  reported  any  boys  that  came  unwashed.  At  seven,  the  tuition  begnn  : 
great  attention  wa*  paid  to  Latin  composition  in  prose  and  verse,  and  the  boys  conversed  in 
Latin.  Friday  teems  to  have  been  Hogging  day.  Among  the  booka  read  by  the  boys  in  the 


Progress  of  Education.  45 

two  highest  forms  are  mentioned  Caesar's  Commentaries,  Cicero  De  OfHciis  and  Be  Amicitia, 
Virgil,  Lucian,  and,  what  is  remarkable,  the  Greek  Grammar;  a  knowledge  of  Greek  at  this 
period  being  a  rare  accomplishment  even  at  our  universities.  Its  study  was,  however, 
gaining  ground  in  Elizabeth's  reign  ;  and  in  a  book'published  in  1586,  it  is  stilted  that  at  Eton, 
Winchester,  and  Westminster,  boys  were  then  "  well  entered  in  the  Latin  and  Greek  tongues 
and  rules  of  versifying  ];  Throughout  this  MS.  record  is  shown  the  antiquity  of  making 
the  upper  boys  responsible  for  the  good  conduct  of  the  lower,  which  has  ever  been  the  ruling 
principle  at  Eton — in  the  schools,  at  meal-times,  in  the  chapel,  in  the  playing-fields,  and  in 
the  dormitory  ;  and  there  was  a  prsepositor  to  look  after  dirty  and  slovenly  boys.* 

Of  scholars'  expenses  at  Eton  early  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  we  find  a  record  in  the  ac 
counts  of  the  sons  of  Sir  William  Cavendish,  of  Chatsworth.  Among  the  items,  a  breast  of 
mutton  is  charged  tenpence ;  a  small  chicken,  fourpence  ;  a  week's  board  five  shillings  each, 
besides  the  wood  burned  in  their  chamber ;  to  an  old  woman  for  sweeping  and  cleaning  the 
chamber,  twopence ;  mending  a  shoe,  one  penny  ;  three  candles,  ninepense  ;  a  book,  Esop's 
Fables,  fourpeuce;  two  pair  of  shoes,  sixteenpence  ;  two  bunches  of  wax-lights,  one  penny  ; 
the  sum  total  of  the  payments,  including  board  paid  to  the  bursars  of  Eton  College,  living 
expenses  for  the  two  boys  and  their  man,  clothes,  books,  washing,  etc.,  amount  to  l'2l  12s. 
Id.  The  expense  of  a  scholar  at  the  University  in  1514  was  but  five  pounds  annually,  af 
fording  as  much  accommodation  as  would  now  cost  sixty  pounds,  though  the  accommoda 
tion  would  be  far  short  of  that  now  customary.  At  Eton,  in  1857,  the  number  of  sholars 
exceeded  700. 

The  College  buildings  have  been  from  time  to  time  re-edified 
and  enlarged.  The  Library,  besides  a  curious  and  valuable  col 
lection  of  books,  is  rich  in  Oriental  and  Egyptian  manuscripts, 
and  beautifully  illustrated  missals.  The  Upper  School  Room 
in  the  principal  court,  with  its  stone  arcade  beneath,  and  the 
apartments  attached  to  it,  were  built  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren, 
at  the  expense  of  Dr.  Allstree,  provost  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II. 

The  College  Hall  interior  has  been  almost  entirely  rebuilt 
through  the  munificence  of  the  Rev.  John  Wilder,  one  of  the 
Fellows,  and  was  reopened  in  October,  1857 :  these  improvements 
include  a  new  open-timber  roof,  a  louver,  windows  east  and  west, 
a  gothic  oak  canopy,  and  a  carved  oak  gallery  over  the  space 
dividing  the  hall  from  the  buttery.  The  oak  paneling  around 
the  room  is  cut  all  over  with  the  names  of  Etonians  of  several 
generations. 

Among  the  Eton  festivals  was  the  Mbntem,  formerly  celebra 
ted  every  third  year  on  Whit-Tuesday,  and  believed  to  have 
been  a  corruption  of  the  Popish  ceremony  of  the  Boy  Bishop. 
It  consisted  of  a  theatrical  procession  of  pupils  wearing  costumes 
of  various  periods,  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  money,  or  "  salt," 
for  the  captain  of  Eton,  about  to  retire  to  King's  College,  Cam 
bridge.  To  each  contributor  was  given  a  small  portion  of  salt, 
at  an  eminence  named  therefrom  Salt-Hill ;  the  ceremony  con 
cluding  with  the  waving  of  a  flag  upon  this  hill  or  Montem.\ 
Boating  and  cricket  are  the  leading  recreations  at  Eton :  the 

*  Condensed  from  Mr.  Creasy's  Memoirs  of  Eminent  Etonians. 

t  The  last  Montem  was  celebrated  at  Whitsuntide,  1844.  The  abolition  of  the  custom 
had  long  been  pressed  upon  the  College  authorities,  and  they  at  length  yielded  to  the  grow 
ing  condemnation  of  the  ceremony  as  an  exhibition  unworthy  of  the  present  enlightened 
age.  A  memorial  of  the  last  celebration  is  preserved  in  that  picturesque  chronicle  of 
events,  the  Illustrated  London  News,  June  1,  1844. 


46  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

College  walks  or  playing-fields,  extend  to  the  banks  of  the  Thames, 
and  the  whole  scene  is  celebrated  by  Gray,  the  accomplished 
Ktonian,  in  his  well-known  Ode  on  a  Distant  I\ospect  of  Eton 
College,  commencing — 

"  Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers 
That  crown  the  watery  glade. ;' 

Waynflete  was  the  first  provost  of  Eton.  Among  the  eminent  scholars  are  Archbishop 
Rotherham,  and  Bishop  West;  Croke.  the  celebrated  Helenist,  one  of  the  first  who  Uught 
the  Greek  language  publicly  in  any  university  north  of  the  Alps  ;  Bishop  Aldrich,  the  friend 
of  Erasmus;  Hall,  the  chronicler:  Bishop  Foxe;  Thomas  Sutton,  founder  of  the  Charter 
house  ;  Sir  Thomas  Smith. 'and  Sir  Henry  Savile,  provosts  ;  Admiral  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert : 
Oughtred,  the  mathematician  :  Tus»< T.  the  useful  old  rhymer;  I'hineas  and  Giles  Fletcher, 
the  poets  ;  th«  martyrs,  Fuller.  Glover,  Saunders,  and  Hullier  ;  Sir  Henry  Wotton.  pro 
vost  ;  *  Robert  Devereux,  third  Earl  of  E>sex ;  Waller,  the  poet ;  Robert  Boyle ;  Ht-nry 
More,  the  I'latonist  ;  Bishops  Pearson  and  Sherlock  ;  the  ever-memorable  John  Hales,  "  the 
Walking  Library,"  Bishops  Barrow  and  Fleetwood  ;  Lord  Camden  ;  the  poets  Gray,  Hroome, 
and  West;  Fielding,  the  novelist;  Dr.  Arne.  the  musical  composer ;  Horace  NValpole;  the 
Marquis  of  Cranby;  Sir  William  Draper  ;  Sir  Joseph  Banks;  Marquis  Cornwall!*  ;  Lord  howe  ; 
Richard  Porson,  the  Greek  Emperor  ;  th«  poets  Shelley,  Praed,  and  Milman  ;  llallam,  the 
historian  ;  and  W.  E  Gladstone,  the  statesman. 

The  Premiers  of  England  during  the  last  century  and  a  half  were  mostly  educated  at 
Eton.  Thus,  Ix>rd  Bolingbroke,  Sir  William  Wyndham,  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  Ix>rd  Towns- 
bend.  Lord  Lytth-ton,  Lord  Chatham,  the  elder  Fox,  Ix>rd  North,  Charles  James  Fox,  Mr. 
Wyndham,  the  Marquis  Wellesley,  Lord  Grenville,  Canning,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Lord 
Grey,  and  the  Earl  of  Derby— were  all  Etonians. 

Among  tin-  cck'liritii-s  of  the  College  should  not  be  forgotten  the  periodical  work  entitled 
The  Etonian,  the  contributors  to  which  were  Eton  scholars,  and  the  author-publisher  was 
the  Etonian  Charles  Knight — a  name  long  to  be  remembered  in  the  commonwealth  of  Eng 
lish  literature. 

King's  College,  which  Henry  founded  in  1441,  at  Cambridge, 
to  be  recruited  from  Eton,  is  the  richest  endowed  collegiate 
foundation  in  that  University.  The  Statutes  declare  that  there 
shall  be  a  provost  and  70  poor  scholars.!  The  Reformation  and 
the  changes  brought  about  by  three  centuries,  have,  however, 
rendered  obedience  to  the  Statutes  impossible,  and  they  are  now 
virtually  the  Statutes  of  William  of  Wykeham,  -which  he  had 
framed  for  New  College.  The  Civil  AVars  of  the  Houses  of 
York  and  Lancaster,  and  the  violent  death  of  the  royal  founder, 
left  the  College  buildings  unfinished  ;  while  Edward  IV.  impov 
erished  its  revenues,  and  even  dissolved  the  College.  Henry 
VII.,  in  whose  reign  the  College  petitioned  Parliament,  on  account 
of  its  straitened  resources,  contributed  to  the  completion  of  the 

*  Wotton  is  described  as  "  a  person  that  was  not  only  a  fine  gentleman  himself,  but  very 
skilled  in  the  art  of  making  others  K>." 

t  Unquestionably  Colleges  were  eleemosynary  foundations,  but  their  sole  object  was  not. 
like  that  of  an  almshouse,  to  relieve  indigence.  They  were  intended,  no  doubt,  to  main 
tain  scholars  who  were  poor;  and  in  an  age  when  learning  was  regarded  as  ignoble  by  the 
great,  and  when  nearly  all  but  the  great  were  poor,  persons  willing  to  enter  the  University 
as  students  could  hardly  be  found,  except  among  the  poor.  If.  in  modern  days,  those  who 
impart  or  seek  education  in  the  Universities  are  not  indigent,  it  must  not  be  thought, 
therefore,  that  the  poor  have  been  robbed  of  their  birthright.  Rather  the  Universities, 
among  other  agencies,  have  so  raised  the  condition  of  society,  and  mental  cultivation  is  now 
so  differe  tly  regarded,  that  persons  intended  for  the  learned  professions  are  at  present 
found  only  among  the  comparatively  wealthy.  Such  persons,  if  elected  for  their  merit  to 
Fellowships  and  Scholarships,  would  faithfully  fulfill  the  main  objects  of  founders,  namely, 
the  promotion  of  religion  and  learning. — lieport  of  the  Oxford  University  CVwimiwicn,  pp. 
39-40. 


Progress  of  Education.  47 

chapel.  The  style  is  Late  Perpendicular,  but  very  rich.  The 
interior,  with  the  stained  glass  windows,  was  completed  by  Henry 
VIII.,  under  the  direction  of  Bishop  Foxe. 

JOHN    CARPENTER   AND    THE    CITY    OF    LONDON    SCHOOL. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  long  reign  of  Edward  III.  there  was 
born  in  London  a  good  citizen  named  John  Carpenter,  who  being 
styled  in  the  documents  of  his  time  clericus  (clerk),  was  an  edu 
cated  man,  and  is  supposed  to  have  studied  at  one  of  the  Inns  of 
Court  for  the  profession  of  the  law.  He  became  Town  Clerk  of 
the  City ;  and  compiled  a  large  volume  in  Latin  of  the  civic 
laws,  customs,  privileges,  and  usages,  a  book  of  great  value  and 
authority.  He  was  at  the  expense  of  painting  the  celebrated 
"Dance  of  Death"  in  St.  Paul's  cloister,  being  an  encourager 
of  the  arts,  and  he  was  a  personal  acquaintance  of  Lidgate,  the 
monk  of  Bury.  He  was  20  years  Secretary  and  Town  Clerk, 
sat  in  parliament  for  the  City,  and  was  Governor  of  St.  Anthony's 
Hospital,  in  Threadneedle-street.  At  his  death  he  bequeathed 
certain  property  in  the  City  "  for  the  finding  and  bringing  up  of 
foure  poore  men's  children  with  meate,  drink,  apparell,  learning 
at  the  schooles  in  the  universities,  etc.,  until  they  be  preferred, 
and  then  others  in  their  places  for  ever."  In  1633,  however, 
this  property  yielded  only  29/.  13s.  4d.  per  annum,  At  this  time 
the  boys  wore  "  coats  of  London  russet"  with  buttons ;  and  they 
had  periodically  to  show  their  copy  books  to  the  Chamberlain, 
in  proof  of  the  application  of  the  charity.  During  the  lapse 
of  nearly  four  centuries,  the  value  of  Carpenter's  estates  had  aug 
mented  from  19Z.  10s.  to  nearly  900/.,  or  nearly  five  and  forty 
fold.  Int  1835,  he  funds  were  greatly  increased  by  subscription, 
and  a  large  and  handsome  school  built  by  the  city  upon  the  site 
of  Honey-lane  market,  north  of  Cheapside,  at  a  cost  of  12,000/., 
to  accommodate  400  scholars.  The  citizens  have,  in  gratitude, 
erected  upon  the  great  staircase  of  the  school  a  portrait  statue 
of  Carpenter,  in  the  costume  of  his  age :  he  bears  in  his  left 
hand  his  Liber  Albus,  a  collection  of  the  City  laws,  customs,  and 
privileges.  The  statue  is  placed  upon  a  pedestal,  inscribed 
with  a  compendious  history  of  the  founder,  and  his  many  benev 
olent  acts. 

Such  has  been  the  goodly  increase  of  Carpenter's  charity. 
It  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  he  may  have  been  prompt 
ed  to  the  bequest  by  the  celebrity  of  the  schools  of  St.  Anthony's 
Hospital,  of  which  he  was  master.  In  the  scholastic  disputa 
tions  amongst  the  grammar-schools,  it  commonly  presented  the 
best  scholars.  Out  of  this  school  sprung  the  great  Sir  Thomas 
More ;  Dr.  Heath,  Archbishop  of  York  and  Lord  Chancellor ; 


48  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Archbishop  Whitgift ;  and  the  celebrated  Dean  Colet,  the  founder 
of  St.  Paul's  School. 

MKRCERS'    SCHOOL. THE    FIRST    GRAMMAR    SCHOOL. 

In  the  twenty-fifth  year  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VI. — 1447 — 
there  was  presented  to  Parliament  a  petition  by  four  clergymen 
setting  forth  the  lack  of  grammar-schools  and  good  teachers  in 
the  City  of  London  ;  and  praying  leave  (which  was  granted  to 
them)  to  establish  schools,  and  appoint  competent  masters  in 
their  respective  parishes.  "  It  were  expedyent,"  say  they,  "  that 
in  London  were  a  sufficient  number  of  scholes,  and  good  enfour- 
mers  in  gramer ;  and  not  for  the  singular  avail  of  two  or  three 
persons  grevously  to  hurt  the  multitude  of  yong  peple  of  al  this 
land.  For  wher  there  is  grete  nombre  of  lerners  and  few  techers, 
and  to  noon  others,  the  maistres  waxen  rid  of  monie,  and  the 
lerners  pouerer  in  connyng,  as  experyence  openlie  she  with,  agenst 
all  vertue  and  ordre  of  well  publik." 

This  is  generally  considered  to  have  been  the  origin  of  Free 
Grammar  Schools,  properly  so  called ;  but  the  only  one  of  the 
schools  established  immediately  in  consequence  of  this  petition 
which  has  survived  to  the  present  time  is  the  Mercers'  School, 
which  was  originally  founded  at  St.  Thomas  de  Aeons  (the  site 
of  Mercers'  Hall,  in  Chcapside),*  for  70  scholars  of  any  age  or 
place,  subject  to  the  management  of  the  Mercers'  Company. 
Among  the  early  scholars  were  Dean  Colet,  Bishop  Thomas,  and 
Bishop  Wren.  The  site  of  the  school-house  was  changed  four 
times ;  and  it  is  now  on  College-hill,  on  the  site  of  Whittington's 
Alms-houses,  "  God's  House,  or  Hospital,"  which  have  been  re 
built  at  Highgate.  It  is  at  this  day  a  strange  location  for  a  seat 
of  learning,  surrounded  by  hives  of  merchandise,  and  close  to 
one  of  the  oldest  sites  of  commerce  in  the  city,  its  turmoil  grates 
harshly  upon  the  quiet  so  desirable  for  a  youth  of  study. 

ST.  PAUL'S  SCHOOL  FOUNDED. 

In  the  reign  of  Edward  IV.,  in  14CG,  there  was  born  in  the 
parish  of  St.  Antholin,  in  the  city  of  London,  one  John  Colet, 
the  eldest  son  of  Sir  Henry  Colet,  Knight,  twice  Lord  Mayor, 
who  had,  besides  him,  twenty-one  children.  In  1483,  John  Colet 
was  sent  to  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he  passed  seven 
years,  and  took  the  usual  degrees  in  arts.  Here  he  studied 
Latin,  with  some  of  the  Greek  authors  through  a  Latin  medium, 
and  mathematics.  Having  thus  laid  a  good  foundation  for  learn- 

*  In  the  porch  of  Mcrctr's  Chapel,  in  Chfapside,  Guy  (founder  of  Guy 's  Hospital)  was 
apprenticed  to  a  bookseller  in  16(50  ;  the  hou^c  was  rebuilt  after  the  Great  Fire,  and  was 
rented  by  Guy,  then  a  master  bookseller. 


Progress  of  Education.  49 

ing  at  home,  he  traveled  in  France  and  Italy  from  1493  to  1497; 
he  had  previously  been  preferred  to  the  rectory  of  Dennington, 
in  Suffolk,  being  then  in  acolyth's  orders.  At  Paris,  Colet  be 
came  acquainted  with  the  scholar  Budrcus,  and  was  afterward  in 
troduced  to  Erasmus.  In  Italy  he  contracted  a  friendship  with 
Grocyn,  Linacre,  Lilly,  and  Latimer,  all  of  whom  were  studying 
the  Greek  language,  then  but  little  known  in  England.  Whilst 
abroad,  he  devoted  himself  to  divinity,  and  the  study  of  the  civil 
and  canon  law.  Colet  returned  to  England  in  1497,  and  subse 
quently  rose  through  various  degrees  of  preferment  to  be  Dean 
of  St.  Paul's.  By  his  lectures  and  other  means,  he  greatly 
assisted  the  spirit  of  inquiry  into  the  Holy  Scriptures  which 
eventually  produced  the  Reformation.  He  had,  however,  many 
difficulties  to  contend  with ;  and  tired  with  trouble  and  persecu 
tion,  he  withdrew  from  the  world,  resolving  in  the  midst  of  life 
and  health,  to  consecrate  his  fortune  to  some  lasting  benefaction, 
which  he  performed  in  the  foundation  of  St.  Paul's  School,  at 
the  east  end  of  St.  Paul's  churchyard,  in  1512  ;  and,  "it  is  hard 
to  say  whether  he  left  better  lands  for  the  maintenance  of  his 
school,  or  wiser  laws  for  the  government  thereof." — Fuller. 

The  original  school-house,  built  1508-12,  was  destroyed  in 
the  Great  Fire  of  166G,  but  was  rebuilt  by  Wren.  This  second 
school  was  taken  down  in  1824,  and  the  present  school  built 
of  stone  from  the  designs  of  George  Smith  :  it  has  a  handsome 
central  portico  upon  a  rusticated  base,  projecting  over  the  street 
pavement.  The  original  endowment  and  for  several  years  the 
only  endowment  of  the  school,  was  5oL  14s.  W^d.,  the  annual 
rents  of  estates  in  Buckinghamshire,  which  now  produce  1858A 
16s.  lOkd.  a-year;  and,  with  other  property,  make  the  present 
income  of  the  school  upward  of  50001.  Lilly,  the  eminent 
grammarian,  the  friend  of  Erasmus  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  was 
the  first  master  of  St.  Paul's,  and  "  Lilly's  Grammar"  is  used 
to  this  day  in  the  school ;  the  English  rudiments  were  written  by 
Colet,  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  probably  by  Cardinal  Wbl- 
sey ;  the  Latin  syntax  chiefly  by  Erasmus,  and  the  remainder 
by  Lilly :  thus,  the  book  may  have  been  the  joint  production  of 
four  of  the  greatest  scholars  of  the  age.  Colet  directed  that  the 
children  should  not  use  tallow,  but  wax  candles  in  the  school ; 
fourpence  entrance-money  was  to  be  given  to  the  poor  scholar 
who  swept  the  school ;  and  the  masters  were  to  have  livery  gowns, 
"  delivered  in  clothe." 

Colet  died  in  his  53d  year,  in  1519.     He  wrote  several  works 

in  Latin  ;  the  grammar  which  he  composed  for  his  school  was 

called  "  Paul's  Accidence."     The  original  Statutes  of  the  school, 

signed  by  Dean  Colet,   were  many   years   since    accidentally 

4 


50  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

picked  up  at  a  bookseller's,  and  by  the  finder  presented  to  the 
British  Museum.  The  school  is  for  153  boys  "of  every  nation, 
country  and  class;"  the  153  alluding  to  the  number  of  fishes 
taken  by  St.  Peter  (John  xxi.  2).  The  education  is  entirely 
classical ;  the  presentations  to  the  school  are  in  the  gift  of  the 
Muster  of  the  Mercers'  Company;  and  scholars  are  admitted  at 
fifteen,  but  eligible  at  any  age  after  that.  Their  only  expense  is 
for  books  and  wax  tapers.  There  are  several  valuable  exhibi 
tions,  decided  at  the  Apposition,  held  in  the  first  three  days  of  the 
fourth  week  after  Easter,  when  a  commemorative  oration  is  de 
livered  by  the  senior  boy,  and  prizes  are  presented  from  the 
governors.  In  the  time  of  the  founder,  the  "  Apposition  dinner" 
was  "  an  assembly  and  a  litell  dinner,  ordayned  by  the  surveyor, 
not  exceedynge  the  pryce  of  four  nobles." 

In  the  list  of  eminent  Paulines  (as  the  scholars  are  called) 
are,  Sir  Anthony  Denny  and  Sir  William  Paget,  privy  counselors, 
to  Henry  VIII. ;  John  Leland,  the  antiquary;  John  Milton,  our 
Great  epic  poet ;  Samuel  Pepys,  the  diarist ;  John  Strype,  the 
ecclesiastical  historian ;  Dr.  Culamy,  the  High  Churchman ;  the 
Great  Duke  of  Marlborough ;  R.  \V.  Elliston,  the  comedian  ;  Sir 
C.  Mansfield  Clarke,  Bart. ;  Lord  Chancellor  Truro,  etc.  Among 
the  annual  prizes  contended  for  is  a  prize  for  a  copy  of  Latin 
Lyrics,  given  by  the  parent  of  a  former  student  named  Thurston, 
the  High  Master  to  apply  a  portion  of  the  endowment  to  keeping 
up  the  youth's  gravestone  in  the  Highgate  Cemetery. 

EDWARD    THE    FOURTH    AND    HIS    TUTORS. 

Edward  IV.,  born  at  Rouen,  in  1441,  has  little  if  any  claim 
to  be  recorded  as  a  promoter  of  education.  We  have  seen  how 
he  impoverished  the  two  royal  Colleges  of  his  predecessor,  Henry 
VI.,  at  Eton  and  Cambridge,  by  seizing  upon  their  endowments, 
and  endeavoring  to  divert  the  streams  of  their  munificence. 
The  whole  life  of  Edward  was  divided  between  the  perils  of  civil 
war,  and  unrestrained  sensual  indulgence.  Nevertheless,  Edward 
drew  up  for  the  observance  of  his  offspring,  a  set  of  regulations, 
which  so  closely  corresponded  with  those  made  by  his  mother, 
that  it  may  be  fairly  inferred  he  followed  the  same  plans  which 
had  been  strictly  enforced  in  the  education  and  conduct  of  him 
self  and  his  brothers  in  thuir  own  youth  in  Ludlow  Castle.* 
Though  the  discipline  was  constant  and  severe,  the  noble  chil 
dren  expressed  with  familiarity  their  childish  wishes  to  their 
father  and  communicated  to  him  their  imaginary  grievances. 
This  is  instanced  in  a  letter  preserved  in  the  Cottonian  MSS.  from 

*  In  this  celebrated  fortress,  now  a  mass  of  picturesque  ruins,  Milton  produced  his 
masque  of  Comus ;  and  in  a  room  oyer  the  gateway,  Butler  wrote  Hudibrat. 


Progress  of  Education.  51 

Edward  to  his  father,  written  when  he  was  a  mere  stripling,  pe 
titioning  for  some  "fyne  bonnets"  for  himself  and  his  brother; 
and  complaining  of  the  severity  of  "  the  odious  rule  and  de 
meaning"  of  one  Richard  Crofte  and  his  brother,  apparently 
their  tutors. 

In  another  letter,  one  of  the  earliest  specimens  extant  of  do 
mestic  and  familiar  English  correspondence — it  being  written  in 
1454,  when  Edward  the  Earl  of  March  was  twelve,  and  the  Earl 
of  Rutland  eleven,  years  of  age  —  addressing  their  father  as 
"  Right  high  and  mighty  Prince,  our  most  worshipful  and  greatly 
redoubted  lord  and  father,"  they  say : 

And  if  it  please  your  highness  so  know  of  our  welfare  at  the  making  of  this  letter,  we 
were  in  good  health  of  body,  thanked  be  God  ;  beseeching  your  good  and  gracious  father 
hood  of  your  daily  blessing.  And  where  you  command  us  by  your  said  letters  to  attend 
specially  to  our  learning  in  our  young  age,  that  should  cause  us  to  grow  to  honor  and  wor 
ship  in  our  old  age,  please  it  your  highness  to  wit,  that  we  have  attended  our  learning  since 
we  came  hither,  and  shall  hereafter,  by  the  which  we  trust  to  God  your  gracious  lordship 
and  good  fatherhood  shall  be  pleased. 

Yet,  Edward's  attachment  in  his  maturer  years  to  his  tutor 
Crofte,  of  whom  he  complains  above,  was  evinced  by  the  emolu 
ments  which  he  bestowed  upon  him  after  his  accession  to  the 
crown.  Sir  Richard  Crofte  espoused  the  lady  governess  of  the 
young  Plantagenets :  he  lived  to  a  great  age,  and  was  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  soldiers  of  his  time ;  he  survived  every  mem 
ber  of  the  family  in  whose  service  he  had  been  engaged,  and 
had  to  mourn  the  premature  and  violent  deaths  of  the  whole  of 
his  princely  pupils.  —  Retrospective  Review,  2d  S.  vol.  i. 

Edward  has,  perhaps,  a  better  title  to  be  considered  a  legis 
lator  than  any  other  King  of  England,  as  he  actually  presided 
in  the  courts  of  justice,  according  to  Daniel,  who  states  that  in 
the  second  year  of  his  reign  Edward  sat  three  days  together, 
during  Michaelmas  term,  in  the  Court  of  King's  Bench,  in  order 
to  understand  the  law ;  and  he  likewise,  in  the  17th  year,  pre 
sided  at  the  trials  of  many  criminals. 

COSTLINESS    OF    MANUSCRIPT   BOOKS. 

The  books  that  were  to  be  found  in  the  palaces  of  the  great 
at  this  period,  were  for  the  most  part  highly  illuminated  manu 
scripts,  bound  in  the  most  expensive  style.  In  the  wardrobe  ac 
counts  of  King  Edward  IV.,  we  find  that  Piers  Baudwyn  is 
paid  for  "  binding,  gilding,  and  dressing "  of  two  books,  twenty 
shillings  each,  and  of  four  books  sixteen  shillings  each.  Now, 
twenty  shillings  in  those  days  would  have  bought  an  ox.  But 
the  cost  of  this  binding  and  garnishing  does  not  stop  here :  for 
there  were  delivered  to  the  binder  six  yards  of  velvet,  six  yards 
of  silk,  laces,  tassels,  copper  and  gilt  clasps,  and  gilt  nails.  The 


52  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

price  of  velvet  and  silk  in  those  days  was  enormous.  We  may 
reasonably  conclude  that  these  royal  books  were  a<  much  for 
show  as  use.  One  of  these  books  thus  garnished  by  Edward  the 
Fourth's  binder,  is  called  "Le  Bible  Ilistoriaux"  (the  Historical 
Bible),  and  there  are  several  copies  of  the  same  book  in  manu 
script  in  the  British  Museum. 

Edward  was,  however,  a  reader.  In  his  Wardrobe  Accounts 
are  entries  for  binding  his  Titus  Livius,  his  Froissart,  his  Jose- 
phus,  and  his  Bibles,  as  well  as  for  the  cost  of  fastening  chest- 
to  remove  his  books  from  London  to  Eltham ;  and  the  King  and 
his  court  lent  a  willing  ear  to  the  great  discovery  of  Print  in  ir, 
which  was  to  make  knowledge  a  common  property,  causing,  a< 
Caxton  says  Earl  Rivers  did,  in  translating  three  works  for  his 
press,  "books  to  be  imprinted  and  so  multiplied  to  go  abroad 
among  the  people." 

A  letter  of  Sir  John  Paston,  written  to  his  mother  in  1474, 
showrs  how  scarce  money  was  in  those  days  for  the  purchase  of 
luxuries  like  books.  He  says:  "As  for  the  books  that  were  Sir 
James's  (the  Priest's),  if  it  like  you  that  I  may  have  them.  T  am 
not  able  to  buy  them,  but  somewhat  would  I  give,  and  the  re 
mainder,  with  a  good  devout  heart,  by  my  troth,  I  will  pray  for 
his  soul.  ...  If  any  of  them  are  claimed  hereafter,  in  faith 
I  will  restore  it."  The  custom  of  borrowing  books,  and  not  re 
turning  them,  is  as  old  as  the  days  of  the  Red  and  White  Roses. 
John  Paston  left  an  inventory  of  his  books,  eleven  in  number. 
One  of  the  items  in  this  catalogue  is  "  A  Book  of  Troilus,  which 
William  B hath  had  near  ten  years,  and  lent  to  Dame  Wing- 
Held,  and  there  I  saw  it." 

EDWARD    V.    IN    LUDLOW    CASTLE. 

Edward,  the  eldest  son  of  Edward  IV.,  was  born  in  the  sanc 
tuary  at  Westminster,  in  1470.  At  the  death  of  his  father  he 
was  twelve  years  old,  keeping  a  mimic  court  at  Ludlow  Castle, 
with  a  council.  Ordinances  for  the  regulation  of  the  prince's 
<laily  conduct  were  drawn  up  by  his  father  shortly  before  his 
death,  which  prescribe  his  morning  attendance  at  mass,  his  occu 
pation  "  at  school,"  his  meals,  and  his  sports.  No  man  is  to  sit 
at  his  board  but  such  as  Earl  Rivers  shall  allow  :  and  at  this 
hour  of  meat  it  is  ordered  "that  there  be  read  before  him  noble 
stories,  as  behoveth  a  prince  to  understand ;  and  that  the  com 
munication  at  all  times,  in  his  presence,  be  of  virtue,  honour,  cun- 
ing  (knowledge),  wisdom,  and  deeds  of  worship,  and  nothing 
that  shall  move  him  to  vice." — ( MS.  in  British  Museum.)  The 
Bishop  of  Worcester,  John  Alcock,  the  president  of  the  council, 
was  the  prince's  preceptor.  On  the  death  of  his  father,  in  1483, 


Progress  of  Education.  58 

Edward  was  called  to  the  throne ;  but  after  a  mere  nominal  pos 
session  of  less  than  three  months,  he  and  his  brother,  Richard 
Duke  of  York,  both  disappeared,  and  nothing  is  known  as  to 
their  fate  ;  but  the  prophetic  words  of  the  dying  Edward  IV.  were 
fulfilled:  "If  you  among  yourselves  in  a  child's  reign  fall  at  de 
bate,  many  a  good  man  shall  perish,  and  haply  he  too,  and  ye 
too,  ere  this  land  shall  find  peace  again." 

INTRODUCTION    OF    PRINTING. 

The  reign  of  Edward  IV.  is  illustrious  as  being  that  in  which 
Printing  was  introduced  into  England.  From  the  weald  of  Kent 
came  William  Caxton  to  London  to  be  apprenticed  to  a  mercer 
or  merchant.  By  skill  and  industry  he  arose  to  be  appointed 
agent  for  the  Mercers'  Company  in  the  Low  Countries.  Leav 
ing,  however,  his  mercantile  employment,  he  was  absent  for  two 
years  in  Germany,  when  the  art  of  Printing  from  movable  types 
was  the  wonder  of  the  country.  By  this  art  books  could  be  pro 
duced  at  a  tenth  of  the  price  of  manuscripts.  Caxton  learned 
the  mystery,  and*  brought  Printing  into  England,  and  thus  ren 
dered  Bibles  and  other  books  alike  the  property  of  the  great  and 
the  mean.  In  the  Almonry  of  the  abbey  church  at  Westminster, 
Caxton  set  up  the  first  printing-press  ever  known  in  England ; 
the  first  book  printed  here  being  The  Game  and  Play  of  the 
Chesse,  1474,  folio;  and  the  very  house  in  which  this  great  work 
was  done  remained  until  the  year  1845,  or  371  years  from  the 
date  of  the  first  book  printed  in  England.  This  book  was  in 
tended  by  Caxton  for  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  amongst  all 
ranks  of  people  :  it  contains  authorities,  sayings,  and  stories,  "  ap 
plied  unto  the  morality  of  the  public  weal,  as  well  as  of  the  no 
bles  and  of  the  common  people,  after  the  game  and  play  of  chess;" 
and  Caxton  trusts  that  "  other,  of  what  estate  or  degree  he  or 
they  stand  in,  may  see  in  this  little  book  that  they  may  govern 
themselves  as  they  ought  to  do." 

EARLY    PRINTED    BOOKS. 

The  greater  part  of  the  works  which  were  issued  from  the 
press  during  the  first  century  of  printing,  both  in  England  and 
on  the  continent  of  Europe,  were  such  as  had  been  written  in 
the  previous  ages,  and  had  long  existed  in  manuscript.  The 
first  printers  were  always  booksellers,  and  sold  their  own  im 
pressions.  The  two  occupations  were  not  divided  till  early  in  the 
sixteenth  century. 

Ames  and  Herbert  have  recorded  the  titles  of  nearly  10,000 
distinct  works,  published  in  Great  Britain,  between  1471  and 
1COO,  equaling,  on  an  average,  seventy -six  works  each  year. 


54  School-Days  cf  Eminent  Men. 

Many  of  these  works,  however,  were  single  sheets;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  were,  doubtless,  many  which  have  not  been 
recorded.  The  number  of  readers  in  Great  Britain  during  thi> 
period  was  comparatively  small ;  and  the  average  number  of  each 
book  printed  is  not  supposed  to  have  been  more  than  ^00. 

AVi-  believe  that  the  books  which  have  been  written  in  the  lan 
guages  of  western  Europe,  during  the  last  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  translations  from  the  ancient  languages,  of  course,  inclu 
ded,  are  of  greater  value  than  all  the  books  which  at  the  begin 
ning  of  that  period  were  extant  in  the  world. 

CHILDHOOD    AND    EDUCATION    OF    RICHARD    THE    THIRD. 

All  that  remains  of  the  town  of  Fotheringhay,  one  of  the  fa 
mous  historic  sites  of  Northamptonshire,  is  a  small  village,  with 
a  noble  collegiate  church  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Here,  amidst 
the  ancient  gilding  of  a  shield  of  arms,  has  been  traced  "a  boar, 
for  the  honour  of  Windsor,"  possessed  by  Richard  III.: 

The  bristled  boar,  in  infant  gore, 

Wallows  beneath  the  thorny  shade. —  Gray. 

The  device  reminds  one  that  in  the  castle  of  Fotheringhay,  which 
was  the  principal  seat  of  the  Plantagenets,  was  born  in  1452, 
Richard  Plantagenct,  usually  designated  as  Richard  the  Third, 
the  youngest  son  of  Richard  Duke  of  York,  who  fell  at  the  bat 
tle  of  Wakefield.  His  duchess  Cecily,  "the  Rose  of  Raby," 
chose  for  the  instruction  of  her  numerous  family,  a  lady  govern 
ess  of  rank,  from  whom,  in  the  absence  of  their  natural  parents, 
the  young  Plantagenets  received  an  education  very  superior  to 
that  which  was  then  ordinarily  bestowed  even  upon  high-born 
youth.  In  the  household  of  the  Duchess,  religious  and 
moral  sentiments  were  strictly  inculcated :  even  at  "  dynner 
tyme,"  she  had  "a  lecture  of  holy  matter,  either  *  Hilton,  of  Con 
templative  and  Active  Life,'  or  other  spiritual  and  instructive 
works;"  and  "in  the  tyme  of  supper,"  she  "recyted  the  lecture 
that  was  had  at  dynner  to  those  that  were  in  her  presence."* 

Notwithstanding  the  idle  tales  of  monkish  chroniclers  relative 
to  the  birth  of  Richard — which  Shakspeare  has  adopted  from 
the  narratives  of  prejudiced  historians — no  authentic  record  is 
extant  of  Richard's  birth,  beyond  the  time  and  place.  W.  Ilut- 

*  In  the  document  preserved  at  the  Hoard  of  Green  Cloth,  whence  the  above  details  are 
quoted,  arc  the  following  Rules  of  the  House  : 

Upon  eating  days.     At  dinner  by  eleven  of  tho  clocke. 

Upon  fasting  days.     At  din   er  by  twelve  of  the  clocke. 

At  supper  upon  eating  davcs  ;  for  the  office rs  at  four  of  the  clocke. 

My  lady  and  the  household  at  five  of  the  clocke  at  supper. 

Livery  of  tin-s  and  candles,  trom  the  feast  of  AU-hallows.  unto  Good  Friday— then  cx- 
pircth  the  time  of  fire  and  caudles. 


Progress  of  Education.  55 

ton,  who  devoted  eighteen  years  to  the  traditions  connected  with 
this  prince,  asserts,  after  minute  inquiries  among  the  localities  of 
his  childhood,  that  "  his  infancy  was  spent  in  his  father's  house, 
where  he  cuckt  his  ball  and  shot  his  taw  with  the  same  delight 
as  other  lads."  But,  Richard's  parents  lived  in  royal  state  in 
Fotheringhay  castle  ;  and  cotemporary  annals  record  that  their 
young  children  were  at  times  surprised  and  seized  in  their  retire 
ment,  and  had  to  fly  in  all  haste  from  the  enemy ;  when  the  in 
fant  Richard  was  peculiarly  watched  by  the  Lady  Cecily ;  and 
Richard,  despite  of  Lancastrian  prejudices,  is  proved  to  have  tes 
tified  through  life  the  most  respectful  deference  for  his  affectionate 
mother.  He  was  little  more  than  seven  years  of  age  when  he 
was  made  prisoner  with  her  at  the  sacking  of  Ludlow  castle ; 
and  escaping  to  London,  instead  of  taking  up  their  abode  in  Bay- 
nard's  castle,  they  privately  sought  an  asylum  at  the  law  cham 
bers  of  Sir  John  Paston,  in  the  Temple  ;*  and  after  the  defeat 
and  death  of  their  father  at  Sendal,  near  Wakefield,  the  widowed 
Duchess  had  her  children  conveyed  to  Holland,  where,  under 
the  protection  of  Philip  Duke  of  Burgundy,  at  Utrecht  they  had 
princely  and  liberal  'education ;  the  Low  Countries  being,  at  this 
crisis,  the  seat  of  chivalry,  and  distinguished  by  its  patronage  of 
learning  and  the  fine  arts.  Hence  the  exiled  children  were 
brought  to  England  by  order  of  their  brother,  Edward  IV.,  to 
be  instructed  in  the  practice  of  arms  preparatory  to  knighthood, 
when  Richard  was  created  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  Admiral  of 
the  Sea. 

The  Chivalrous  Education  of  this  period  was  very  severe.  The  infant  aspirant  for  knight 
hood,  whether  prince  or  peer,  remained  until  the  age  of  seven  under  the  tutelage  of  his 
mother  or  female  relatives  ;  while  he  was  carefully  instructed  in  religious  and  moral  and 
domestic  duties,  and  taught  the  limited  scholastic  acquirements  of  that  period.  At  the  age 
of  seven,  he  was  removed  into  the  family  of  some  renowned  feudal  lord,  who  initiated  him 
into  the  mysteries  and  hardships  of  a  martial  and  chivalrous  career ;  there  he  remained  as 
a  page  until  the  age  of  fourteen,  when  invested  with  the  first  degree  of  squire  he  exchanged 
the  short  dagger  for  the  sword,  and  thus  became  qualified  to  follow  his  gallant  leader  to  the 
field  of  battle,  to  the  joust  or  tournament ;  to  lead  his  war-steed,  or  buckle  on  his  armor  : 
to  furnish  him  with  fresh  horses  and  weapons  ;  and  himself  to  strive  and  win  the  spurs  of 
knighthood.  At  the  age  of  twenty-one  he  was  knighted  with  great  solemnity,  impressive 
rites  and  ceremonies,  the  initiation  being  hallowed  by  the  Church  ;  and  thus  he  became  the 
warrior  knight  of  the  Middle  Ages. — Abridged  from  Miss  Halsteacfs  Richard  III. 

As  Sir  George  Buck  states  that  the  King,  when  he  called  home 
his  two  brothers,  entered  them  into  the  practice  of  arms,  it  is 
most  probable  that  Gloucester  passed  the  next  seven  years  in  the 
abode  of  some  powerful  baron,  there  to  be  well  tutored  in  chiv 
alrous  accomplishments ;  and  an  exchequer-roll  records  that 
money  was  "paid  to  Edward  Earl  of  Warwick  ('  the  Kingmaker') 
for  costs  and  expenses  incurred  by  him  on  behalf  of  the  Duke  of 

*  Sir  John  Paston  was  knighted  by  Edward  IV.  at  his  coronation,  probably  in  requital 
for  this  faithful  service. 


">»'•  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Gloucester,  the  King's  brother."  Thus  was  founded  the  military 
fame  of  Richard's  after  years — highly  extolled  even  by  his  ene 
mies,  lie  is  thought  to  have  passed  his  youth  at  the  castle  of 
Middleham,  in  Yorkshire,  associated  with  the  flower  of  English 
chivalry,  practicing  manly  exercises,  bold  and  athletic,  or  sportn  ••, 
with  ••  hawk  and  hound,  seasoned  with  lady's  smiles,"  and  form 
ing  early  friendships  which  lasted  through  life.*  At  the  early 
age  of  fourteen,  Richard  was  created  a  Knight  of  the  Garter, 
which  is  sufficient  evidence  of  the  progress  he  must  then  have 
made  in  military  accomplishments  and  princely  and  gallant  de 
portment.  Richard's  public  career  may  be  said  to  date  from  this 
period :  his  first  act  being,  by  appointment  of  the  King,  to  trans 
port  the  remains  of  his  father  for  interment  in  the  church  at 
Fotheringhay  ;  and  Richard  is  thought  to  have  finished  the  build 
ing  of  this  church,  from  the  carved  boar,  his  crest,  being  on  each 
side  of  the  supporters  of  the  royal  arms,  already  mentioned. 
There  are  undoubted  memorials  that  Gloucester  was  a  prince  of 
powerful  mind,  with  shrewdness  and  discretion  far  beyond  his 
years,  and  "  in  wit  and  courage  equal  to  either  of  his  brothers, 
though  in  body  and  prowess  far  beneath  them  both"  (Sir  Thomas 
More),  nature  having  compensated  him  by  strength  of  mind  for 
inferiority  in  personal  appearance.  Lastly,  he  was  "  a  high-spir 
ited  youth,  whom  all  were  praising  and  applauding;"  yet  none 
have  been  more  grievously  misrepresented  in  after  life,  as  i- 
proved  by  the  Public  Statutes  of  his  reign.  lie  bestowed  alms 
on  various  religious  bodies,  and  was  a  benefactor  to  a  college  in 
each  University.  And  we  learn  from  Rymer  that  Richard  had 
iii  his  service  an  Italian  whose  name  was  Titus  Livius,  and  who 
was  both  Poet  and  Orator  to  the  Duke. 

Yet  how  pcrversly  has  the  character  of  Richard  been  vilified.  The  magic  powers  and 
Lancastrian  partialities  of  Sh.ikspeare,  based  on  Sir  Thomas  More,  have  fixed  this  calumny 
in  the  public  mind:  in  the  mgn  of  .lame*  I.  the  middle  classes  referred  to  Shakspoare  for 
English  his'ory  ;  and  the  (treat  Duke  of  Marlborough,  Lord  Chatham,  and  Southey,  the 
their  principal  acquaintance  with  English  history  to  have  been  derived 
from  Shakspcare's  historical  dramas. 

TROUBLED    BOYHOOD    OF    IIKNIIY  VII. 

Henry  VII.,  the  son  of  Edmund  Tudor,  Earl  of  Richmond, 

*  One  of  Richard's  most  devoted  associates  at  Middleham  was  the  young  Lord  Lovell, 
whew  attachment  to  Gloucester  in  after  times  led  him  into  many  tragical  vicissitudes  :  he 
accompanied  the  prince  in  most  of  his  military  campaign*  :  during  the  protectorate  he  held 
the  lucrative  office  of  chief  butler  of  England  ;  wore  one  of  the  swords  of  justice,  and  walked 
on  the  king's  left,  hand,  at  his  coronation  ;  and  after  attending  him  to  the  battle  of  Bos  worth, 
he  Li  supposed  to  have  been  starved  to  death  at  his  own  seat.  Minster  Lovell,  in  Oxford 
shire;  the  skeleton  of  a  man  seated  in  a  chair,  with  his  head  reclining  upon  a  table,  being 
accidentally  discovered  there  in  a  chamber  underground,  towards  the  close  of  the  17th  cen 
tury.  The  Lord  Lovell  probably  took  refuge  in  this  place  of  concealment  after  hu  defeat 
at  the  battle  of  Stoke,  a  largo  reward  being  offered  for  his  apprehciiMon  ;  and  his  melan 
choly  end  is  supposed  to  have  occurred  from  neglect  on  the  part  of  those  who  were  intrusted 
with  hi.s  secret.— Lingard,  vol.  v.  p.  L'JO. 


Progress  of  Education.  57 

and  Margaret  Beaufort,  his  countess,  was  born  in  the  castle  of 
Pembroke,  in  1456.  The  small  apartment  in  which  Henry  was 
born  is  represented  to  be  near  the  chapel  in  the  castle;  but  Le- 
land,  who  lived  near  that  time,  states  that  the  monarch  first  saw 
the  light  in  one  of  the  handsome  rooms  of  the  great  gateway  : 
<;  In  the  latter  ward  I  saw  the  chambre  where  King  Henry  the 
Seventh  was  borne,  in  knowledge  whereof  a  chymmeney  is  now 
made  with  the  armes  and  badges  of  King  Henry  VII."  His 
father  dying  in  the  following  year,  left  his  infant  son  Henry  to 
the  care  of  his  brother,  Jasper  Earl  of  Pembroke.  His  mother 
was  twice  remarried  :  she  was  rich,  pious,  charitable,  and  gener 
ous  ;  and  to  her  bounty  Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  and  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  owe  their  existence.  The  Countess 
also  established  a  Professorship  of  Divinity  in  each  university, 
the  holders  of  which  are  called  Lady  Margaret's  Professors :  she 
likewise  appointed  a  public  preacher  at  Cambridge,  whose  duties 
are  now  confined  to  the  delivery  of  one  Latin  sermon  yearly. 

Henry  was  cradled  in  adversity,  but  found  a  protector  in  his 
uncle,  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  till  the  earl  was  attainted,  and  fled; 
when  his  castle  and  earldom  were  granted  to  Baron  William 
Herbert,  who  coming  to  take  possession,  and  finding  there  Mar 
garet  and  her  son  Henry,  then  in  his  fifth  year,  he  was  carried 
by  that  nobleman  to  his  residence,  Raglan  Castle,  Monmouth 
shire,  now  an  ivied  ruin.  Long  afterward,  Henry  told  the  French 
historian,  Comines,  that  he  had  either  been  in  prison,  or  in  strict 
surveillance,  from  the  time  he  was  five  years  of  age. 

Sir  William's  family  of  four  sons  and  six  daughters  afforded 
Henry  companions  in  his  own  sphere  of  life,  and  gave  him  op 
portunities  to  acquire  accomplishments  and  practice  exercises 
that  would  have  been  wholly  unattainable  on  account  of  the  re 
tired  habits  of  the  Countess  of  Richmond.  Yet,  Henry  grew 
up  sad,  serious  and  circumspect;  full  of  thought  and  secret  obser 
vation;  peaceable  in  disposition,  just  and  merciful  in  action. 
Erom  the  old  Flemish  historians,  and  his  biographer  Lord  Bacon, 
it  further  appears  that  Henry  "  was  fair  and  well  spoken,  with 
singular  sweetness  and  blandishment  of  words,  rather  studious 
than  learned,  with  a  devotional  cast  of  countenance ;  for  he  was 
marvellously  religious  both  in  affection  and  observance." — (Life 
of  Henry  F77.)  He  appears  to  have  excited  no  common  degree 
of  interest  in  the  hearts  of  his  guardians  in  Pembroke  Castle, 
and  to  have  continued  to  win  upon  their  love  and  affection,  as  he 
advanced  in  years,  as  it  is  asserted  that  by  the  Lady  Herbert  he 
was  well  and  carefully  educated,  and  that  Sir  William  desired  to 
see  him  wedded  to  his  favorite  daughter  Maud. 

After  the  battle  of  Banbury,  in  which  Sir  Richard  Herbert 


58  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

A\ -:i<  taken  prisoner,  and  behead* •«!.  tlic  youthful  Earl  of  Rich 
mond,  though  strictly  watched,  and  considered  in  the  light  of  a 
captive,  in  Pembroke  Castle,  was  most  courteously  treated,  and 
honorably  brought  up  by  the  Lady  Herbert.  Andn-a^  Scott,  a 
priest  of  Oxford,  is  said  to  have  been  his  preceptor;  and  Henry's 
cotemporary  biographer,  Sandford,  in  recording  this  fact,  men 
tions  also  the  eulogiums  bestowed  by  Scott  on  his  great  capacity 
and  aptitude  for  study.  Nevertheless,  as  he  was  now  fourteen 
years  of  age,  his  uncle,  Jasper  Tudor,  took  him  from  Wales,  and 
carried  him  to  London,  where,  after  being  presented  to  Henry 
VI.,  he  was  placed  as  a  scholar  at  Eton.  Such  is  the  statement 
of  Miss  Halstead,  quoting  Sandford  as  her  authority.  Lord  Ma- 
con  relates,  that  Henry  VI.  washing  his  hands  at  a  great  feast, 
at  his  newly-founded  College  at  Eton,  turned  toward  the  boy 
Henry  and  said :  "This  is  the  lad  which  shall  possess  quietly 
that  that  we  now  strive  for ;"  which  vaticination  has  been  thus 
beautifully  rendered  by  Shakspeare  : 

A'.  Henry. — ''My  Lord  of  Somerset,  what  youth  is  that, 

Of  whom  you  seem  to  have  BO  tender  care  .'  " 
Som. — '•  My  licjrc,  it  i.<  young  Henry,  Earl  of  Richmond." 
A',  lltnry. — '•  r<>ine  hither,  England's  hope.     If  secret  powers 

Su-iri-.-t  but  truth  to  my  divining  thoughts, 

This  pretty  l:i«l  will  prove  our  country's  bliss. 

His  looks  are  full  of  peaceful  majesty  ; 

Ills  head  by  nature  fram'd  to  wear  a  crown  ; 

His  hand  town-Id  a  sceptre,  and  himself 

Likely,  in  our  time,  to  bless  a  royal  throne. 

Make  much  of  him,  my  lords ;  for  this  is  he. 

Must  help  you  more,  than  you  are  hurt  by  me." 

Henry  VI.,  Scene  VI.,  Ac>.  IV. 

This  is  a  favorite  tradition ;  but  the  only  printed  authority  for 
it  is  that  of  Sandford,  who,  in  his  Genealogical  History,  says  that 
"  while  he  (Henry  VII.)  was  a  child  and  a  scholar  in  Eton  Col 
lege,  he  was  there  by  King  Henry  the  Sixth,  prophetically  en 
titled  the  Decider  of  the  then  difference  between  that  prince  and 
King  Edward  the  Fourth."  Hall,  the  chronicler,  himself  an 
Etonian,  does  not,  however,  record  among  its  students  the  sa 
gacious  founder  of  the  dynasty  of  the  Tudors  ;  and  Mr.  Creasy 
has  searched  in  vain  the  archives  of  the  College  for  evidence. 

Miss  Halstead  relates,  however  (but  without  the  authority), 
that  the  young  Earl  was  subsequently  withdrawn  from  Eton  by 
his  uncle,  Jasper  Tudor,  and  sent  again,  for  greater  security,  to 
Pembroke  Castle,  where  his  mother  continued  to  sojourn.  After 
the  battle  of  Tewkcsbury,  Henry  was  sent  back  to  Kazlan  Castle, 
whence  he  was  secretly  carried  off  by  his  uncle  to  his  own  castle 
of  Pembroke  ;  whence  they  escaped  the  search  of  King  Edward, 
and  taking  to  sea,  were  driven  on  the  coast  of  Britanny,  where 
they  long  remained  in  a  position  between  guests  and  prisoners. 


Progress  of  Education.  59 

As  Henry  grew  to  manhood,  his  personal  character  for  ability 
and  courage  caused  him  to  be  recognized,  without  any  hereditary 
claim,  as  the  head  of  the  Lancastrian  exiles. 

Philip  de  Comine*,  who  knew  Henry  well,  testifies  that  he  was  perfect  in  that  courtly 
breeding,  which  so  conciliates  favor  in  princes  who  are  ready  of  access,  and  plausible  in 
speech.  He  had  become  master  of  the  French  language  during  his  exile;  and  though,  in 
consequence  of  his  long  imprisonment,  and  the  trials  which  had  saddened  his  early  life,  he 
was  singularly  cautious  and  timid,  he  had,  nevertheless,  gained  wisdom  from  the  same 
school  of  adversity — a  wisdom  that  enabled  him  to  profit  by  any  favoring  circumstance  that 
might  lead  to  more  prosperous  days. — Miss  Halstead's  Life  of  Margaret  Beaufort,  p.  101. 

Henry  VII.,  though  he  was  called  (i  the  Solomon  of  England," 
did  little  for  the  spread  of  education  beyond  his  works  at  Eton 
College.  The  sayings  recorded  of  him  show  more  weariness 
and  cunning  than  knowledge  of  literature ;  and  though  he  pos 
sessed  great  penetration,  his  mind  was  narrow.  Arthur,  son  of 
Henry  VII.,  we  are  told,  was  well  instructed  in  grammar,  poetry, 
oratory,  and  history.  In  this  reign  the  purity  of  the  Latin 
tongue  was  revived,  the  study  of  antiquity  became  fashionable, 
and  the  esteem  for  literature  gradually  propagated  itself  through 
out  Europe.  The  newly  introduced  art  of  Printing  facilitated 
the  progress  of  this  amelioration  ;  though  some  years  elapsed  be 
fore  its  beneficial  effects  were  felt  to  any  considerable  extent. 

A  custom  of  this  date  shows  the  zeal  of  the  London  scholars. 
Upon  the  eve  of  St.  Bartholomew  (September  5),  they  held 
disputations;  and  Stow  tells  us  that  the  scholars  of  divers  gram 
mar-schools  disputed  beneath  the  trees  in  the  churchyard  of  the 
priory  of  St.  Bartholomew,  in  West  Smithfield.  These  disputa 
tions  ceased  with  the  suppression  of  the  priory,  but  were  revived 
one  year  under  Edward  VI.,  when  the  best  scholar  is  stated  to 
have  received  a  silver  arrow  for  his  prize ;  but  in  some  cases,  the 
prize  was  a  silver  pen. 

AN    EMINENT    GRAMMARIAN,   AND    POET    LAUREATE. 

Early  in  the  sixteenth  century  flourished  Robert  Whittington, 
the  author  of  several  grammatical  treatises  which  were  long  used 
in  the  schools.  He  was  born  at  Lichlield,  about  the  year  1480, 
and  was  educated  by  the  eminent  grammarian  John  Stanbridge, 
in  the  school  then  attached  to  Magdalene  College,  Oxford  ;  and 
having  taken  priest's  orders,  he  set  up  a  grammar-school  of  his 
own,  about  1501,  possibly  in  London.  Besides  school-books,  he 
wrote  also  Latin  verse  with  very  superior  elegance ;  and  he  is 
remembered  in  modern  times  principally  as  the  last  person  who 
was  made  poet  laureate  (poeta  laureatus)  at  Oxford.  This 
honor  he  obtained  in  151#, on  his  petition  to  the  congregation 
of  regents  of  the  University,  setting  forth  that  he  had  spent  four 
teen  years  in  studying,  and  twelve  in  teaching  the  art  of  grammar, 


60  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

(which  wa-  understood  to  include  rhetoric  and  poetry,  or  versifi 
cation),  and  praying  that  he  might  be  laureated  or  graduated  in 
the  said  art.  These  academical  graduations  in  grammar,  on  oc 
casion  of  which,  as  AVarton  states,  a  "wreath  of  laurel  wa<  presented 
to  the  new  graduate,  who  was  afterward  styled  pocta  laureatus? 
are  supposed  to  have  given  ri-e-  to  the  appellation  as  applied  to 
the  King's  poet,  or  versifier,  who  seems  to  have  been  merely  a 
graduated  grammarian  or  rhetorician  employed  in  the  service  of 
the  King. 

EARLY    LIFE    AND    CHARACTER    OF    HENRY    VIII. 

Henry  VIII.,  the  second  son  of  Henry  VII.  and  Elizabeth  of 
York,  was  born  in  1491,  at  his  palace  in  his  "manor  of  Plea- 
zaunce,"  at  Greenwich. 

Henry  was  from  the  first  destined  to  the  Archbishopric  of 
Canterbury  ;  "  that  prudent  King,  his  father,"  observes  Lord 
Herbert  (in  the  History  of  his  Life  and  Reign),  "  choosing  this 
as  the  most  cheap  and  glorious  way  of  disposing  of  a  younger 
son."  He  received,  accordingly,  a  learned  education  ;  "so  that," 
continues  this  writer,  "  besides  his  being  an  able  Latinist,  philos- 
pher,  and  divine,  he  was  (which  one  might  wonder  at  in  a  King) 
a  curious  musician,  as  two  entire  masses,  composed  by  him,  and 
often  sung  in  his  chapel,  did  abundantly  witness."  But  the  death 
of  Henry's  elder  brother  Arthur,  in  1502,  made  him  heir  to  the 
crown  before  he  had  completed  his  eleventh  year,  and  his  cler 
ical  education  was  not  further  proceeded  with.  However,  he 
was  initiated  into  the  learning  of  the  ancients,  and  though  he  was 
so  unfortunate  as  to  be  led  into  the  study  of  the  barren  contro 
versies  of  the  schools,  which  was  then  fashionable,  he  still  dis 
covered,  says  Hume,  "a  capacity  fitted  for  more  useful  and  en 
tertaining  knowledge."  He  founded  Trinity  College,  at  Cam 
bridge,  and  amply  endowed  it ;  and  the  countenance  given  to 
letters  by  the  King  and  his  ministers  rendered  learning  fashion 
able.  The  Venetian  Ambassador  to  England,  Sebastian  Gius- 
tinian,  describes  Henry  at  this  period  (1515),  as  "so  gifted  and 
adorned  with  mental  accomplishments  of  every  sort  that  we  be 
lieve  him  to  have  few  equals  in  the  world.  He  speaks  English, 
French,  and  Latin;  understands  Italian  well ;  plays  almost  on 
every  instrument ;  sings  and  composes  fairly." 

One  of  the  means  which  Cardinal  AA'olsey  employed  to  please 
the  capricious  Henry  was  to  converse  with  him  on  favorite  topics 
of  literature.  Cavendish,  who  was  gentleman-usher  to  Wolsey, 
and  who  wrote  his  life,  tells  us  that  "  his  sentences  and  witty  per 
suasions  in  the  council-chamber  were  always  so  pithy,  that  they, 
as  occasion  moved  them,  continually  assigned  him  for  his  filed 


Progress  of  Education.  61 

tongue  and  excellent  eloquence  to  be  expositor  unto  the  King  in 
all  their  proceedings." 

Education  had  done  much  for  Henry ;  and  of  his  intellectual 
ability  we  need  not  trust  the  suspicious  panegyrics  of  his  co- 
temporaries.  His  state  papers  and  letters  are  as  clear  and  pow 
erful  as  those  of  Wolsey  or  of  Cromwell.  In  addition  to  this, 
Henry  had  a  fine  musical  taste,  carefully  cultivated ;  he  spoke 
and  wrote  in  four  languages  ;  and  he  possessed  a  knowledge  of  a 
multitude  of  subjects.  He  was  among  the  first  physicians  of  his 
age ;  he  was  his  own  engineer,  inventing  improvements  in  artil 
lery,  and  new  constructions  in  ship-building.  His  reading  was 
vast,  especially  in  theology,  which  could  not  have  been  acquired 
by  a  boy  of  twelve  years  of  age,  for  he  was  no  more  when  he 
became  Prince  of  Wales.  He  must  have  studied  theology  with 
the  full  maturity  of  his  understanding.  In  private  he  was  good- 
humored  and  good-natured.  But,  like  all  princes  of  the  Plan- 
tagenet  blood,  he  was  a  person  of  most  intense  and  imperious 
will.  His  impulses,  in  general  nobly  directed,  had  never  known 
contradiction ;  and  late  in  life,  when  his  character  was  formed, 
he  was  forced  into  collision  with  difficulties  with  which  the  ex 
perience  of  discipline  had  not  fitted  him  to  contend.* 

ILL-EDUCATED    NOBILITY. 

Some  amongst  the  highest  in  rank  affected  to  despise  knowl 
edge,  especially  when  the  invention  of  Printing  had  rendered 
the  ability  to  read  more  common  than  in  the  days  of  precious 
manuscripts.  Even  as  late  as  the  first  year  of  Edward  VI. 
(1547),  it  was  not  only  assumed  that  a  Peer  of  the  Realm  might 
be  convicted  of  felony,  but  that  he  might  lack  the  ability  to  read, 
so  as  to  claim  Benefit  of  Clergy  ;  for  it  is  directed  that  any  Lord 
of  the  Parliament  claiming  the  benefit  of  this  Act  (1st  Edward 
VI.),  "though  he  cannot  read,  without  any  burning  in  the  hand, 
loss  of  inheritance,  or  corruption  of  his  blood,  shall  be  judged, 
taken,  and  used,  for  the  first  time  only,  to  all  intents,  construc 
tions,  and  purposes,  as  a  clerk  convict." 

That  the  nobility  were  unfitted,  through  ignorance,  for  the  dis 
charge  of  high  offices  in  the  State,  at  the  time  of  the  Reforma 
tion,  is  shown  by  a  remarkable  passage  in  Latimer's  "  Sermon 
of  the  Plow,"  preached  in  1548  : 

Why  are  not  the  noblemen  and  young  gentlemen  of  England  so  brought  up  in  the  knowl 
edge  of  God,  and  in  learning,  that  they  may  be  able  to  execute  offices  in  the  commonweal  ? 

...  If  the  nobility  be  well  trained  in  godly  learning,  the  people  would  follow  the 
same  train  ;  ior  truly  such  as  the  noblemen  be,  such  will  the  people  be.  ...  There 
fore  for  the  love  of  God  appoint  teachers  and  schoolmasters,  you  that  have  charge  of  youth, 
and  give  the  teachers  stipends  worthy  their  pains. 

*  Abridged  from  Fronde's  History  of  England. 


62  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Honest  old  Latimer  thus  demanded  that  "  the  young  gentle 
men"  of  England  should  be  educated,  and  lie  "  well  brought  up 
in  tin-  learning  and  knowledge  of  God,"  so  that  **  they  would  not, 
when  they  came  to  age,  so  much  give  themselves  to  other 
vanities." 

THE    SCHOOL    OF    MORE. 

Among  the  most  eminent  men  of  this  remarkable  period  was 
Sir  Thomas  More,  the  records  of  whose  early  life  and  private 
history  throw  considerable  light  upon  the  state  of  education  in 
his  time.  The  intnv-ting  traits  of  More's  boyhood — his  school 
days  at  St.  Anthony's  in  Threadneedle-street  (one  of  the  four 
grammar-schools  founded  by  Henry  VI.)  ;  his  removal  into  the 
household  of  Cardinal  Morton  ;  and  his  college  days  at  Oxford  ; 
will  be  found  sketched  elsewhere  in  this  volume.  We  here  fol 
low  More  into  his  domestic  retirement  at  Chelsea. 

More  hath  built  near  London  (says  Erasmus),  upon  the  Thames,  such  a  commodious 
house,  anil  is  neither  mean,  nor  subject  to  envy,  yet  magnificent  enough.  There  he  con- 
verseth  affably  \viMi  his  family,  his  wife,  his  son  and  daughter,  his  three  daughters  and 

their  husband-  ;  \vith  eleven  grand-children You  would  say  that  there  were  in 

that  place  Plato's  academy  :  but  I  do  the  house  injury  in  comparing  it  to  Plato's  academy, 
wherein  were  only  disputations  of  numbers  and  geometrical  figures,  and  sometimes  of  moral 
virtues.  1  would  rather  call  his  house  a  school  or  university  of  Christian  religion  ;  for 
there  is  none  therein  but  readeth  or  studieth  the  liberal  sciences ;  their  sjierial  care  is  piety 
and  virtue  :  there  is  no  quarreling  or  intemperate  words  heard ;  none  seem  idle ;  which 
household  discipline  that  worthy  gentleman  doth  not  govern  by  proud  and  lofty  words,  but 
with  all  kind  an  1  courteous  benevolence.  Everybody  perfonneth  his  duty,  yet  to  there  al 
ways  alacrity,  neither  b  sober  mirth  anything  wanting. 

In  the  intervals  of  business,  the  education  of  his  children 
formed  More's  greatest  pleasure.  His  opinions  respecting  female 
education  differed  very  widely  from  what  the  comparative  rude 
ness  of  the  age  might  have  led  us  to  expect.  By  nothing,  he 
justly  thought,  is  female  virtue  so  much  endangered  as  by  idle 
ness,  and  the  fancied  necessity  of  amusement ;  and  against  these 
is  there  any  safeguard  so  effectual  as  an  attachment  to  literature  ? 
Some  security  is  indeed  afforded  by  a  diligent  application  to  va 
rious  sorts  of  female  employments ;  yet  these,  while  they  employ 
the  hands,  give  only  partial  occupation  to  the  mind.  But  well- 
chosen  books  at  once  engage  the  thoughts,  refine  the  taste, 
strengthen  the  understanding,  and  confirm  the  morals.  Female 
virtue,  informed  by  the  knowledge  which  they  impart,  is  placed 
on  the  most  secure  foundations,  while  all  the  milder  affections  of 
the  heart,  partaking  in  the  improvement  of  the  taste  and  fancy, 
are  refined  and  matured.  More  was  no  convert  to  the  notion, 
that  the  possession  of  knowledge  renders  women  less  pliant ; 
nothing,  in  his  opinion,  was  so  untractable  as  ignorance.  Al 
though  to  manage  with  skill  the  feeding  and  clothing  of  a  family 
is  an  essential  portion  in  the  duties  of  a  wife  and  a  mother,  yet 


Progress  of  Education.  63 

to  secure  the  affections  of  a  husband,  he  judged  it  no  less  indis 
pensable  to  possess  the  qualities  of  an  intelligent  and  agreeable 
companion.  Nor  ought  a  husband,  if  he  regards  his  own  happi 
ness,  neglect  to  endeavor  to  remove  the  casual  defects  of  female 
education.  Never  can  he  hope  to  be  so  truly  beloved,  esteemed, 
and  respected,  as  when  the  wife  confides  in  him  as  her  friend, 
and  looks  up  to  him  as  her  instructor.  Such  were' the  opinions, 
with  regard  to  female  education,  which  More  maintained  in  dis 
course,  and  supported  by  practice.  His  daughters,  rendered  pro 
ficients  in  music,  and  other  elegant  accomplishments  proper  for 
their  sex,  were  also  instructed  in  Latin,  in  which  language  they 
read,  wrote  and  conversed  with  the  facility  and  correctness  of 
their  father.  The  results  of  this  assiduous  attention  soon  became 
conspicuous,  and  the  School  of  More,  as  it  was  termed,  attracted 
general  admiration.  In  the  meantime  the  stepmother  of  the 
daughters,  a  notable  economist,  by  distributing  tasks,  of  which 
she  required  a  punctual  performance,  took  care  that  they  should 
not  remain  unacquainted  with  female  works,  and  with  the  manage 
ment  of  a  family.  For  all  these  employments,  which  together  ap 
pear  so  far  beyond  the  ordinary  industry  of  women,  their  time 
was  found  sufficient,  because  no  part  of  it  was  wasted  in  idleness 
or  trifling  amusements.  If  any  of  More's  servants  discovered 
a  taste  for  reading,  or  an  ear  for  music,  he  allowed  them  to 
cultivate  their  favorite  pursuit.  To  preclude  all  improper  con 
versation  before  children  and  servants  at  table,  a  domestic  was 
accustomed  to  read  aloud  certain  passages,  so  selected  as  to 
amuse  for  the  time,  and  to  afford  matter  for  much  entertaining 
conversation. 

Margaret  Roper,  the  first-born  of  More's  children,  was  as  cel 
ebrated  for  her  learning  as  beloved  for  her  tender  affection  to 
her  father  in  his  hour  of  suffering.  Erasmus  called  her  the  or 
nament  of  Britain,  and  the  flower  of  the  learned  matrons  of  Eng 
land,  at  a  time  when  education  consisted  only  of  the  revived 
study  of  ancient  learning.  She  composed  a  touching  account  of 
the  last  hours  of  her  father. 

With  a  few  words  upon  Sir  Thomas  More's  views  on  Public 
Education  we  conclude.  That  he  conceived  the  education  of  all 
classes  to  be  most  conducive  to  happiness,  is  evident  from  the 
following  passage  in  his  Utopia,  professedly  written  to  describe 
"  the  best  state  of  a  public  weal,"  or  in  more  familiar  words,  a 
sort  of  model  nation.  More  says :  "  though  there  be  not  many 
in  every  city  which  be  exempt  and  discharged  of  all  other  labors, 
and  appointed  only  to  learning  —  that  is  to  say,  such  in  whom, 
even  from  their  very  childhood,  they  have  perceived  a  singular 
towardness,  a  fine  wit,  and  a  mind  apt  to  good  learning — yet  all 


G4  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

in  their  childhood  be  instructed  in  hnming.  And  the  letter  part 
of  the  people,  both  men  and  women,  throughout  all  their  whole 
life  do  bestow  in  learning  those  spare  hours  \vhicli  we  said  they 
have  vacant  from  t/teir  bodily  labors."  This  was  written  nearly 
three  centuries  and  a  halt'  >iiic<-  ;  the  people  of  England  have  not 
yet  reached  this  condition,  although  they  arc  tending  toward  it 
by  efforts  at  affording  elementary  instruction  for  all  children,  and 
inducing  the  habit  of  self-culture  in  all  adults. 

WOLSEY,  LATIMER,  AND    CRANMER. 

The  boyhood  of  three  great  men  of  this  period  shows  the  means 
of  education  then  obtainable  by  the  middle  classes.  WOLSEY, 
who  was  the  son  of  "  an  honest  poor  man,"  not  a  butcher's  son, 
as  commonly  supposed,*  was  sent  when  a  boy  to  the  Free  Gram 
mar-school  at  Ipswich ;  thence  he  was  removed  to  Magdalene 
College,  Oxford,  and  was  subsequently  appointed  master  of  a 
grammar-school  dependent  on  that  college.  Part  of  his  ill-ac 
quired  wealth,  Wolsey,  late  in  life,  expended  in  the  advancement 
of  learning.  At  Oxford,  he  founded  the  college  of  Christchurch  ; 
but  before  his  magnificent  design  was  completed,  Wolsey  had  lost 
the  favor  of  his  sovereign,  and  the  King  having,  immediately  on  the 
Cardinal's  fall,  taken  possession  of  the  revenues  intended  for  the 
support  of  the  college,  the  design  had  well  nigh  fallen  to  the  ground; 
when  Wolsey,  in  the  midst  of  all  his  troubles,  among  his  last  pe 
titions  to  the  King,  urgently  requested  that  "  His  Majesty  would 
suffer  his  college  at  Oxford  to  go  on."  This  the  King  did,  but 
transferred  the  credit  of  the  measure  to  himself.  Meanwhile, 
AVol.-cy  had  founded  at  Ipswich,  in  Io27,  a  school,  as  a  nursery 
for  his  intended  college  at  Oxford ;  and  this  school  is  said  for 
a  time  to  have  rivaled  the  colleges  of  Eton  and  Winchester. 

HUGH  LATIMER,  the  son  of  a  Leicestershire  farmer,  born  in 
or  about  1472,  was  first  sent  to  a  grammar-school,  and  afterward 
to  Cambridge.  Of  his  family  circumstances,  Latimer  has  left 
us  this  interesting  record :  "  My  father,"  he  writes,  "  was  a  yeo 
man,  and  had  no  lands  of  his  own  ;  only  he  had  a  farm  of  three 
or  four  pounds  by  the  year  at  the  uttermost,  and  hereupon  he 
tilled  so  much  as  kept  half-a-dozen  men.  lie  had  walk  for  a 
hundred  sheep,  and  my  mother  milked  thirty  kine.  lie  was 
able,  and  did  find  the  king  a  harness  with  himself  and  his  horse. 
I  remember  that  I  buckled  on  his  harness  when  he  went  to 

*  Wolsey  was  not  born  in  Ipswich,  as  penerally  stated  :  but  at  Long  Melford,  near  Ips 
wich.  (See  Curiosititx  of  History,  p.  225.)  He  in  paid  to  have  written  the  preface  to 
"  Lilly's  Grammar ;''  but  this  is  doubtful.  In  this  preface  the  truest  principle*  of  tuition 
are  ably  laid  down  :  and  he  necessity  of  making  a  scholar  learn  thoroughly  what  he  is 
taught  step  by  step  is  fully  stated  and  enforced. 


Progress  of  Education.  65 

Blackheath  field.  He  kept  me  to  school,  or  else  I  had  not  been 
able  to  have  preached  before  the  king's  majesty  now.  He  married 
my  sisters  with  five  pounds,  or  twenty  nobles,  each,  having 
brought  them  up  in  godliness  and  fear  of  God.  He  kept  hos 
pitality  for  his  poor  neighbors,  and  some  alms  he  gave  to  the 
poor ;  and  all  this  he  did  of  the  said  farm." 

THOMAS  CRANMER  was  born  at  Aslacton,  Notts,  in  1489,  of 
a  family  who  had  been  settled  in  that  county  for  some  genera 
tions.  His  first  instruction  was  received  from  the  parish-clerk, 
at  the  village  school,  from  which  he  was  removed  by  his  mother, 
now  become  a  widow,  who  placed  him  in  1503  at  Jesus  Col 
lege,  Cambridge,  amongst  "  the  better  sort  of  students,"  where 
Greek,  Hebrew,  and  theology  were  the  principal  objects  of  his 
industry. 

BOYHOOD    AND    LEARNING    OF    KING    EDWARD    THE    SIXTH. 

The  most  munificent  patron  of  education  who  ever  sat  upon 
the  British  throne  was  Edward  VI.,  the  only  son  of  Henry  VIII. 
who  survived  him.  He  was  born  at  Hampton  Court  in  1537,  on 
the  12th  of  October,  which  being  the  vigil  of  St.  Edward,  he 
received  his  Christian  appellation  in  commemoration  of  the  can 
onized  king.  His  mother,  Queen  Jane  Seymour,  died  on  the 
twelfth  day  after  giving  him  birth.  The  child  had  three  step 
mothers  in  succession  after  this ;  but  he  was  probably  not  much 
an  object  of  attention  with  either  of  them.  Sir  John  Hay  ward, 
who  has  written  the  history  of  his  life  and  reign  with  great  full 
ness,  says  that  "he  was  brought  up  among  nurses  until  he  ar 
rived  at  the  age  of  six  years.  He  was  then  committed  to  the 
care  of  Dr.  (afterward  Sir  Anthony)  Cook,  and  Mr.  (afterward 
Sir  John)  Cheke,  the  former  of  whom  appears  to  have  undertaken 
the  prince's  instruction  in  philosophy  and  divinity,  the  latter  in 
Greek  and  Latin."  He  succeeded  to  the  throne  when  little  more 
than  nine  years  of  age.  The  conducj  of  the  young  prince  toward 
his  instructors  was  uniformly  courteous ;  and  his  generous  dispo 
sition  won  for  him  the  highest  esteem.  In  common  with  the 
children  of  the  rich  and  great,  he  was  from  his  cradle  surrounded 
with  means  of  amusement.  It  is  related  that  at  the  age  of  five 
years,  a  splendid  present  was  made  to  him  by  his  godfather, 
Archbishop  Cranmer ;  the  gift  was  a  costly  service  of  silver,  con 
sisting  of  dishes,  plates,  spoons,  etc.  The  child  was  overjoyed 
with  the  present,  when  the  prince's  valet,  seeking  to  impress  on 
his  mind  its  value,  observed :  "  Your  highness  will  be  pleased  to 
remember  that  although  this  beautiful  present  is  yours,  it  must 
be  kept  entirely  to  yourself;  for  if  others  are  permitted  to  touch 
5 


60  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

it,  it  will  be  entirely  spoiled."  "  My  good  Ilinbrook,"  replied 
the  prince  mildly,  "if  no  one  can  touch  these  valuables  without 
spoiling  them,  how  do  you  then  suppose  they  would  ever  have 
been  given  to  me  ?"  Next  day,  Edward  invited  a  party  of  young 
friends  to  a  feast,  which  was  served  upon  the  present  of  plate; 
find  upon  the  departure  of  the  young  guests,  he  gave  to  each  of 
them  an  article  of  the  service,  as  a  mark  of  regard. 

Cranmer,  to  encourage  Edward  in  his  studies,  was  in  the  habit 
of  corresponding  with  him  once  a  week,  and  requiring  of  him  an 
account  of  what  he  had  done  during  that  time.  The  prince  also 
complied  with  the  request  of  his  venerable  godfather,  by  keeping 
a  journal,  for  which  purpose  he  divided  a  sheet  of  paper  into  five 
columns,  and  under  that  arrangement  recorded  his  progress  in 
mytholog3r,  history,  geography,  mathematics,  and  philosophy. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen,  Edward  is  said  to  have  possessed  a  critical 
knowledge  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages  ;  and  to  have  con 
versed  fluently  in  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian.  A  manuscript 
is  still  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  containing  a  collection 
of  his  exercises  in  Greek  and  Latin ;  several  of  his  letters,  in 
French  and  Latin,  written  with  singular  accuracy  of  diction,  are 
also  extant ;  as  well  as  a  French  tract,  composed  before  he  was 
twelve  years  old,  against  the  abuses  of  Popery.  In  the  Ash- 
molean  and  Cottonian  collections  are  other  papers  in  his  hand 
writing;  some  of  which  relate  to  state  affairs,  and  evince  an  in 
timate  knowlege  of  the  domestic  and  foreign  policy  of  his  gov 
ernment,  and  his  anxious  concern  for  the  welfare  of  his  people. 
But  the  most  striking  of  his  existing  productions  are  "  King  Ed 
ward  the  Sixth's  own  Arguments  against  the  Pope's  Supremacy;" 
and  "A  Translation  into  French  of  several  passages  of  Scrip 
ture,  which  forbid  idolatry,  or  the  worshipping  of  false  gods." 
There  are  also  some  "Metrical  Stanzas  on  the  Eucharist/'  which 
Fox  has  printed  in  his  Martyrology,  and  characterizes  as  highly 
creditable  to  the  young  prince ;  and  when  to  his  other  accom 
plishments  it  is  added  that  he  was  well  versed  in  natural  philos 
ophy,  astronomy,  and  logic,  hi<  acquirements  will  be  allowed  to 
have  been  extraordinary.  "This  child,"  says  Garden,  the  cele 
brated  physician,  who  had  frequently  conversed  with  Edward, 
"was  so  bred,  had  such  parts,  was  of  such  expectation,  that  he 
looked  like  a  miracle  of  a  man  ;  and  in  him  was  such  an  attempt 
of  Nature,  that  not  only  England,  but  the  world,  had  reason  to 
lament  his  being  so  early  snatched  away." 

In  a  register  kept  for  the  purpose,  Edward  noted  down  the 
characters  of  public  men ;  and  all  the  important  events  of  his 
reign,  together  with  the  proceedings  in  council,  were  recorded 
in  a  private  journal,  which  he  never  allowed  to  pass  out  of  his 


Progress  of  Education.  67 

possession.  The  original  of  this  Journal  *  still  remains  ;  and  a 
soundness  of  judgment  is  displayed  in  the  various  entries,  and 
the  reflections  with  which  they  are  accompanied,  far  beyond  Ed 
ward's  years.  "  It  gave  hopes,"  said  Lord  Orford,  "  of  his  prov 
ing  a  good  king,  as  in  so  green  an  age  he  seemed  resolved  to  be 
acquainted  with  his  subjects  and  his  kingdom."  He  was  quite 
familiar  with  the  value  of  money,  and  the  principles  of  finance ; 
and  the  mercantile  and  military  affairs  of  the  country.  He  was 
inflexibly  just  both  in  public  and  private ;  and  his  attention  to  his 
social  duties  was  no  less  remarkable  than  his  strict  discharge  of 
the  regal  functions.  In  disposition  he  was  rneek,  affable,  and 
benevolent ;  dignified,  yet  courteous  in  conversation  ;  and  sincere 
and  disinterested  in  his  friendship.  "  If  ye  knew  the  towardness 
of  that  young  prince,"  observes  one  that  was  about  his  person, 
"  your  hearts  would  melt  to  hear  him  named ;  the  beautifullest 
creature  that  liveth  under  the  sun,  the  wittiest,  the  most  amiable, 
and  the  gentlest  thing  of  all  the  world."  His  compassion  for 
the  poor  and  the  distressed  was  enlarged,  yet  unostentatious ; 
and  the  distribution  of  his  charities  was  rendered  doubly  valua 
ble  by  the  promptitude  and  considerate  delicacy  with  which  they 
were  conferred. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  most  prominent  features  in  the  charac 
ter  of  the  young  king  were  his  sincere  piety  and  zeal  in  the  cause 
of  religion.  He  showed  this  strength  of  feeling  even  in  his  in 
fancy.  One  of  his  companions  having  stepped  upon  a  large  Bible 
for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  toy  which  was  out  of  his  reach,  he 
rebuked  him  severely  for  so  doing,  and  left  the  play  in  which 
they  were  engaged.  At  his  coronation,  when  the  swords  of  the 
three  kingdoms  were  carried  before  him,  he  observed  that  one 
was  still  wanting,  and  called  for  the  Bible.  "  That"  said  he, 
"  is  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  and  ought  in  all  right  to  govern  us, 
who  use  them  for  the  people's  safety,  by  God's  appointment. 
Without  that  sword  we  can  do  nothing :  from  that,  we  are  what 
we  are  this  day.  Under  that  we  ought  to  live,  to  fight,  to  gov 
ern  the  people,  and  to  perform  all  our  affairs.  From  that  alone 
we  obtain  all  power,  virtue,  grace,  salvation,  and  whatever  we 
have  of  divine  strength."  Such  indeed  was  Edward's  regard  for 
religion,  and  for  everything  connected  with  it,  that  it  was  usual  to 
compare  him  to  Josiah ;  and  he  had  also  acquired  the  character 
istic  appellation  of  "  Edward  the  Saint."  It  was  his  custom  to 
take  notes  of  the  sermons  which  he  heard ;  particularly  of  those 
which  seemed  to  bear  any  immediate  relation  to  his  own  duties 

*  This  is  preserved,  with  some  other  Remains  of  the  young  King  in  the  British  Museum, 
and  printed,  though  imperfectly,  in  the  collection  of  Kecords,  forming  yol.  ii.  part  ii.,  of 
Burnet's  History  of  the  Keformation. 


68  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

and  difficulties ;  and  the  attention  which  he  paid  to  the  precepts 
inculcated  in  the  discourses  of  the  eminent  divines  who  pn-achrd 
before  him,  frequently  produced  a  visible  and  permanent  effect 
upon  his  conduct,  as  will  be  seen  presently. 

EDWARD    VI.    FOUNDS    CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL. 

Few  events  in  the  history  of  Christian  benevolence  are  so 
minutely  recorded  as  the  foundation  of  this  the  noblest  institution 
in  the  world.  At  the  same  time,  Edward  founded  St.  Thomas's 
and  Bridewell  Hospitals ;  the  three  foundations  forming  part  of 
a  comprehensive  scene  of  charity,  resulting  from  a  sermon 
preached  before  the  King  by  the  pious  Bishop  Ridley,  at  West 
minster,  in  15">2.  The  Bishop,  discoursing  on  the  excellence  of 
charity,  "made  a  fruitful  and  goodly  exhortation  to  the  rich  to 
be  merciful  unto  the  poor,  and  also  to  move  such  as  were  in 
authority,  to  travail  by  some  charitable  ways  and  means,  to  com 
fort  and  relieve  them."  Edward's  heart  was  touched  by  the 
earnestness  of  the  appeal,  and  "  understanding  that  a  great  num 
ber  of  poor  people  did  swarm  in  this  realm,  and  chiefly  in  the 
city  of  London,  and  that  no  good  order  was  taken  of  them,"  he 
x'lit  the  Bishop  a  message  when  the  sermon  was  ended  desiring 
him  not  to  depart  till  he  had  spoken  with  him.  As  soon  as  he 
was  at  leisure,  he  took  him  aside  into  a  private  gallery,  where 
he  made  him  sit  down  and  be  covered ;  and  giving  him  hearty 
thanks  for  his  sermon,  entered  into  conversation  on  several 
points,  which,  according  to  his  usual  practice,  he  had  noted  down 
for  special  consideration.  Of  this  interview,  the  venerable  Rid 
ley  remarked :  "  Truly,  truly,  I  could  never  have  thought  that 
excellency  to  have  been  in  his  grace,  but  that  I  beheld  and  heard 
it  in  him." 

Adverting,  at  length,  to  the  Bishop's  exhortation  in  behalf  of 
the  poor,  Edward  greatly  commended  it,  and  it  had  evidently 
made  a  powerful  impression  upon  his  mind.  He  then  acknowl 
edged  the  application  of  Ridley's  exhortation  to  himself,  and 
prayed  the  Bishop  to  say  his  mind  as  to  what  ways  were  best  to  be 
taken.  Ridley  hesitated  for  a  moment  to  reply.  At  length,  he 
observed  that  the  city  of  London,  as  well  on  account  of  the  ex 
treme  poverty  which  prevailed  there  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  the 
wise  and  charitable  disposition  of  its  more  wealthy  inhabitants  on 
the  other,  would  afford  a  favorable  opening  for  the  exercise  of 
the  royal  bounty;  and  advised  that  letters  should  be  forthwith 
directed  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  requiring  him,  with  such  assistants 
as  he  might  think  meet,  to  consult  upon  the  matter.  Edward 
wrote  the  letter  upon  the  instant,  and  charged  Ridley  to  deliver 
it  himself;  and  his  delight  was  manifested  in  the  zeal  with  which 


Progress  of  Education.  69 

he  undertook  the  commission,  for  the  King's  letter  and  message 
were  delivered  on  the  same  evening.  On  the  following  day 
Ridley  dined  with  the  Lord  Mayor,  who,  with  two  Aldermen  and 
six  Commoners,  took  the  King's  proposal  into  consideration ; 
other  counselors  were  added,  and  at  length  the  plan  recommended 
to  his  Majesty  was  to  provide  Christ's  Hospital  for  the  education 
of  poor  children  ;  St.  Thomas's,  for  the  relief  of  the  sick  and  dis 
eased  ;  and  Bridewell,  for  the  correction  and  amendment  of  the 
idle  and  the  vagabond. 

For  Christ's  Hospital  was  granted  the  monastery  of  the  Grey 
Friars  ;  the  King  also  presenting  the  foundation  with  a  consid 
erable  stock  of  linen,  which  the  commissioners,  who  had  lately 
been  appointed  to  inspect  the  churches  in  and  about  the  metrop 
olis,  had  deemed  superfluous  for  the  performance  of  divine  ser 
vice,  as  celebrated  since  the  Reformation.  For  the  second  hos 
pital,  an  almonry  was  fitted  up ;  and  for  the  third  hospital,  Ed 
ward  granted  his  royal  palace  of  Bridewell.  He  then  bestowed 
certain  lands  for  the  support  of  these  foundations ;  and  having 
signed  the  instrument,  ejaculated  in  the  hearing  .of  his  Council — 
"  Lord,  I  yield  thee  most  hearty  thanks,  that  thou  hast  given  me 
life  this  long,  to  finish  this  work  to  the  glory  of  thy  name." 

A  large  picture  (attributed  to  Holbei"),  which  hangs  in  the  Great  Hall  of  Christ's  Hos 
pital,  portrays  this  interesting  scene.  The  young  monarch  sits  on  an  elevated  throne,  in  a 
scarlet  and  ermined  robe,  holding  the  sceptre  in  his  left  hand,  and  presenting  with  the 
other  the  Charter  to  the  kneeling  Lord  Mayor.  By  his  side  stands  the  Chancellor  holding 
the  seals,  and  next  to  him  are  other  officers  of  State.  Bishop  Ilidley  kneels  before  him 
with  uplifted  hands,  as  if  supplicating  a  blessing  on  the  event ;  whilst  the  Aldermen,  etc  , 
with  the  Lord  Mayor,  kneel  on  both  sides,  occupying  the  middle  ground  of  the  picture  ,  and 
lastly,  in  front,  are  a  double  row  of  boys  on  one  side,  and  girls  on  the  other,  from  the 
master  and  matron  down  to  the  boy  and  girl  who  have  stepped  forward  from  their  respec 
tive  rows,  and  kneel  with  raised  hands  before  the  King. 

Edward  lived  about  a  month  after  signing  the  Charter  of  In 
corporation  of  the  Royal  Hospitals  :  in  the  spring  of  1552  he  had 
been  seized  with  the  small-pox,  when  he  had  scarcely  re 
covered  from  the  measles ;  a  consumptive  cough  came  on ;  his 
medical  advisers  were  dismissed,  and  his  cure  intrusted  to  the 
ignorant  empiricisms  of  an  old  nurse  ;  this  disorder  was  greatly 
aggravated,  and  he  died  in  the  arms  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  on  the 
Gth  July,  1553,  in  the  sixteenth  year  of  his  age,  praying  God  to 
receive  his  spirit,  and  to  defend  the  realm  from  papistry. 

The  old  Grey  Friars  buildings  adjoining  Newgate-street  were 
now  repaired  by  aid  of  the  citizens'  benefactions,  and  in  Novem 
ber,  1552,  there  were  admitted  340  "poore  fatherlesse  children" 
within  the  ancient  monastery  walls.  "  On  Christmas-day,"  says 
Stow,  "while  the  Lord  Maior  and  Aldermen  rode  to  Paul's,  the 
children  of  Christ's  Hospitall  stood  from  St.  Lawrence-lane  end 
in  Cheape  towards  Paul's,  all  in  one  livery  of  russet  cotton,  340 


TO  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

in  number ;  and  at  Easter  next  they  were  in  blue,  at  the  Spittle, 
and  so  have  continued  ever  since."  Hence  the  popular  name  of 
the  Hospital,  "the  Blue-Coat  School." 

Since  this  period,  the  income  of  the  institution  has  known 
much  fluctuation ;  and,  consequently,  the  number  of  inmates. 
The  340  children  with  which  the  Hospital  opened  had  dwindled 
in  1580  to  150.  The  object  of  the  institution  has  also,  in  tin- 
lapse  of  time,  become  materially  changed,  which  may  in  a  great 
measure  be  attributed  to  the  influence  of  the  Governors,  or  bene 
factors,  its  chief  supporters. 

The  Hospital,  with  the  church  of  the  monastery,  was  destroyed 
by  the  Great  Fire,  but  was  soon  rebuilt.  Later  was  added  the 
Mathematical  School,  founded  by  Charles  II.,  in  1G72,  for  40 
boys,  to  be  instructed  in  navigation;  they  are  called  "King's 
Boys,"  and  wear  a  badge  on  the  right  shoulder;  and  there  was 
subsequently  added,  by  the  legacy  of  a  Governor,  a  subordinate 
Mathematical  School  of  12  boys  ("The  Twelves"),  who  wear 
a  badge  on  the  left  shoulder ;  and,  lastly,  to  these  have  been 
added  "The  Twos." 

This  was  the  first  considerable  extension  of  the  system  of  edu 
cation  at  the  Hospital,  which  originally  consisted  of  a  grammar- 
school  for  boys,  and  a  separate  school  for  girls ;  the  latter  being 
taught  to  read,  sew,  and  mark.  A  book  is  preserved  containing 
the  records  of  the  Hospital  from  its  foundation,  and  the  antheni 
sung  by  the  first  children. 

Of  the  school  buildings,  there  remains  the  Writing  School,  a 
large  edifice  built  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  in  1G94,  at  the  ex 
pense  of  Sir  John  Moore,  of  whom  a  marble  statue  is  placed 
in  the  facade.  Of  the  ancient  Friary — portions  of  the  cloister- 
only  remain.  The  great  Dining  Hall  was  commenced  in  1825, 
and  is  built  partly  on  the  ancient  wall  of  London,  and  partly  on 
the  foundation  of  the  refectory  of  the  monastery.  It  is  a  vast 
edifice  in  the  Tudor  style,  by  Shaw,  the  principal  front  facing 
Newgate-street,  with  the  inclosed  play-ground;  the  Hall,  with  its 
lobby  and  organ  gallery,  is  178  feet  long;  it  is  lit  by  nine  large 
windows,  and  is,  next  to  Westminster  Hall,  the  noblest  room  in 
the  metropolis.  Here,  besides  the  large  Charter  picture  already 
described,  is  a  painting  by  Verrio,  of  James  II.  on  his  throne, 
receiving  "the  Mathematical  Boys,"  in  the  same  form  as  at  their 
annual  presentation  to  this  day ;  though  in  Verrio's  picture  are 
girls  as  well  as  boys. 

In  this  II:ill  arc  held  the  "  Suppings  jn  Public,"  on  the  seven  Sunday  evenings  preceding 

r  Suinliiy,  (mil  on  flint  evening,  to  which  vi.-itnrs  nre  admitted  by  tickets.     The  tables 

aro  laid  with  cheese  in  wooden  bowls  :  beer  in  wn.ide.n  piggins.  poured  from  leathern  jacks  : 

and  bread  brought  in  huge  basket*.     The  official  company  then  ent4:r,  tin;  Lord  Mayor  or 

President  taking  tils  seat  in  a  chair  made  of  oak  from  old  St.  Katherine's  Church  ;  a  hyuiu 


Progress  of  Education.  71 

is  sung,  accompanied  by  the  organ  ;  a  Grecian  reads  the  evening  service  from  the  pulpit, 
silence  being  enforced  by  three  strokes  of  a  hammer.  After  prayers,  the  meal  commences, 
the  visitors  walking  between  the  tables  At  its  close,  the  "  trade  boys  ;'  take  up  the  pig- 
gins  and  jacks,  baskets,  bowls,  and  candlesticks,  and  pass  in  procession  before  the  authori 
ties,  bowing  to  them  ;  the  entire  800  boys  thus  passing  out. 

The  Spital  (or  Hospital)  Sermons  are  preached  in  Christchurch,  Newgate-street,  on  Easter 
Monday  and  Tuesday.  On  Monday,  the  children  proceed  to  the  Mansion  House,  and  re 
turn  in  procession  to  Christchurch  with  the  Lord  Mayor  and  City  authorities  to  hear  the 
sermon.  On  Tuesday,  the  children  aaain  go  to  the  Mansion  House,  and  pass  through  the 
Egyptian  Hall  before  the  Lord  Mayor,  each  boy  receiving  a  glass  of  wine,  two  buns,  and  a 
shilling ;  the  monitors  half-a-crown  each,  and  the  Grecians  a  guinea.  They  then  return  to 
Christchurch,  as  on  Monday. 

At  the  first  Drawing-room  of  the  year,  forty  "  Mathematical 
Boys  "  are  presented  to  the  Sovereign,  who  gives  them  8/.  8s.  as 
a  gratuity.  To  this,  other  members  of  the  Royal  Family  for 
merly  added  smaller  sums,  and  the  whole  was  divided  among 
the  ten  boys  who  left  the  school  in  the  year.  On  the  illness  of 
King  George  III.  these  presentations  were  discontinued ;  but 
the  Governors  of  the  Hospital  continued  to  pay  11.  3s.,  the 
amount  ordinarily  received  by  each,  to  every  boy  on  quitting. 
The  practice  of  receiving  the  children  was  revived  by  William 
IV. 

Each  of  the  "  Mathematical  Boys"  having  passed  his  Trinity- 
House  examination,  and  received  testimonials  of  his  good  con 
duct,  is  presented  with  a  watch,  worth  from  9/.  to  lo/.,  in  addi 
tion  to  an  outfit  of  clothes,  books,  mathematical  instruments,  a 
Gunter's  scale,  a  quadrant,  and  sea-chest.  On  St.  Matthew's 
Day  (Sept.  21),  "the  Grecians"  deliver  orations,  this  being  a 
relic  of  the  scholars'  disputations  in  the  cloisters. 

The  dress  of  the  Blue-Coat  Boys  is  the  costume  of  the  citi 
zens  of  London  at  the  time  of  the  foundation  of  the  Hospital, 
when  blue  coats  were  the  common  habit  of  the  apprentices  and 
serving-men,  and  yellow  stockings  were  generally  worn.  This 
dress  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  monkish  costume  now  worn  ; 
the  dark-blue  coat,  with  a  closely-fitting  body  and  loose  sleeves, 
being  the  ancient  tunic,  and  the  under-coat,  or  "yellow,"  the  sleeve 
less  under-tunic  of  the  monastery.  The  red  leathern  girdle  cor 
responds  to  the  hempen  cord  of  the  friar.  Yellow  worsted  stock 
ings,  a  flat  black  woolen  cap  (scarcely  larger  than  a  saucer),  and 
a  clerical  neckband,  complete  the  dress. 

The  education  of  the  boys  consists  of  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic,  French,  the  clas 
sics,  and  the  mathematics.  There  are  sixteen  Exhibitions  for  scholars  at  the  Universities 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  etc.  There  are  also  separate  trusts  held  by  the  Governors  of 
the  Hospital,  which  are  distributed  to  poor  widows,  to  the  blind,  and  in  apprenticing  boys, 
etc.  The  annual  income  of  the  Hospital  is  about  50.000/. ;  its  ordinary  disbursements 
48,000*. 

Among  the  eminent  Blues  are  Leigh  Hunt ;  Thomas  Barnes, 
many  years  editor  of  the  Times  newspaper ;  Thomas  Mitchell, 
the  translator  of  Aristophanes;  S.  T.  Coleridge,  the  poet,  and 


72  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Charles  Lamb,  his  cotemporary ;  Middleton,  Bishop  of  Cal 
cutta ;  Jeremiah  Markland,  the  best  scholar  and  critic  of  the 
last  century  ;  Samuel  Richardson,  the  novelist ;  Joshua  Barnes, 
the  scholiast;  Bishop  Stillingfleet ;  CamuYn,  "the  noun-ice  of 
antiquitie;"  and  Campion,  the.  learned  Jesuit  of  the  a-_re  of  Eliz- 
abeth.  Coleridge,  Charles  Lamb,  and  Leigh  Hunt  have  pub 
lished  many  interesting  reminiscences  of  their  cotemporaries 
in  the  school. 

The  subordinate  establishment  is  at  Hertford,  to  which  the  younger  boys  arc  sent  pro 
paratory  to  their  entering  on  the  foundation  in  London.  At  Hertford  there  is  likewise 
accommodation  for  80  girls. 

Hesidea  the  Lord  Mayor,  Court  of  Aldermen,  and  twelve  members  of  the  Common 
Council,  who  are  Governors  rx  <Jflcio,  there  are  between  400  and  500  other  Governors,  at 
the  head  of  whom  are  the  Queen  and  Prince  Albert,  with  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  I'rince 
Alfred.  The  Duke  of  Cam  bridge  is  President  The  qualification  for  Governor  is  a  dona 
tion  of  500/. ;  HII  Alderman  may  nominate  a  Governor  for  election  at  half-price.  There  are 
from  14IK)  to  15' '0  children  on  the  foundation,  including  those  at  ^he  branch  establishment 
at  Hertford.  About  200  boys  are  admitted  annually  (at  the  age  of  from  seven  to  ten  years), 
by  presentations  of  the  Governors;  the  Queen,  the  Lord  Mayor  (two  presentations),  and 
the  Court  of  Aldermen,  presenting  anuu»lly.  and  the  other  Governors  in  rotation,  so  that 
the  privilege  occurs  about  once  in  three  or  four  years.  A  list  of  the  Governors  having 
presentations  is  published  annually  in  March,  and  is  to  be  had  at  the  counting-house 
of  the  Hospital.  "  Grecians  "  and  "  King's  Hoys  "  remain  in  the  school  after  they  are  lif- 
teen  years  old  ;  but  the  other  boys  leave  at  that  age. 

KING  EDWARD'S  SCHOOLS  AT  BIRMINGHAM,  LICIIFIELD, 

TUNBRIDGE,  AND    BEDFORD. 

We  have  seen  in  the  foregoing  narrative  that  Endowments  for 
Education  are,  probably,  nearly  as  old  as  endowments  for  the 
support  of  the  church.  The  monasteries  had  schools  attached 
to  them  in  many  instances.  Still,  it  must  often  have  happened 
(thickly  scattered  though  the  monasteries  were)  that  the  child 
lived  at  an  inconvenient  distance  from  any  one  of  them,  and, 
probably,  little  was  learned  there  after  all.  Before  the  Refor 
mation,  schools  were  also  connected  with  chantries,  and  it  was 
the  duty  of  the  priest  to  teach  the  children  grammar  and  sing 
ing.  Of  this  connection  between  schools  and  religious  founda 
tions,  the  keeping  of  them  in  the  church,  or  in  a  building  which 
w;i>  part  of  it,  is  an  indication.  (See  page  38.)  There  are 
many  schools  still  in  existence  which  were  founded  before  the 
Reformation,  but  a  very  great  number  was  founded  immediately 
after  that  event;  and  one  object  of  Edward  VI.  in  dissolving 
the  chantries  and  other  religious  foundations  then  exi>tin«r,  was 
for  the  purpose  of  establishing  Grammar  Schools.  But  Strype 
assures  us  that  the  law  for  this  purpose  was  grossly  abused ;  for 
"though  the  public  good  was  intended,  yet  private  men  had  most 
of  the  benefit,  and  the  king  and  the  commonwealth,  the  state  of 
learning  and  the  condition  of  the  poor,  were  left  as  they  were 
before,  or  worse."  King  Edward's  Schools  were  founded  out  of 
tithes  that  formerly  belonged  to  religious  houses  or  chantry  lands; 


Progress  of  Education.  73 

and  many  of  these  schools,  owing  to  the  improved  value  of  their 
property,  are  now  among  the  richest  foundations  of  the  kind  in 
England.  There  is  no  doubt,  it  should  be  added,  that  the  desire 
to  give  complete  ascendancy  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformed 
Church  weighed  strongly  with  the  founders  of  these  schools;  and 
the  clergy  were  enjoined  by  proclamation  "  to  exhort  the  people 
to  teach  their  children  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Creed,  and  the  Ten 
Commandments  in  English;"  the  service  of  the  church  having 
been  previously  performed  in  Latin. 

"  The  King's  School "  at  Sherborne  is  said  to  have  been  the 
first  of  King  Edward's  foundation,  in  all  probability  owing  this 
rank  to  the  Protector  Somerset,  who  at  that  time  held  the  estates 
of  Sherborne  Castle.  The  school  premises,  which  are  a  fine 
specimen  of  olden  architecture,  were  arranged  by  Bishop  Jewel ; 
and  the  foundation  takes  a  high  position  among  the  leading 
schools  of  P^ngland. 

Birmingham  Free  Grammar  School  is  one  of  the  richest 
foundations  of  the  kind,  Edward  having  endowed  it  with  the 
property  of  suppressed  religious  houses.  The  Guild  of  the  Holy 
Cross  yielded  it  lands  of  the  yearly  value  of  21/. ;  and  the  Gov 
ernors  were  to  nominate  and  appoint  "a  pedagogue  and  sub-ped 
agogue,"  with  statutes  and  ordinances  for  the  government  of  the 
school,  "  for  the  instruction  of  boys  and  youths  in  the  learned 
languages."  The  value  of  the  endowment  had  increased,  in  1829, 
to  upward  of  3000/.  a-year ;  and,  in  1831,  the  Governors  were 
empowered  by  law*  to  build  a  new  school  for  teaching  modern 
languages,  the  arts  and  sciences ;  besides  eight  other  schools  for 
the  elementary  education  of  the  poorer  inhabitants  of  the  town. 
The  endowed  income  of  this  noble  foundation  is  now  8000/. ;  it 
has  ten  university  exhibitions  ;  and  the  number  of  scholars  in  the 
Grammar  School  is  nearly  500.  The  school-house  is  a  hand 
some  stone  structure,  in  the  Tudor  style  ;  designed  by  Barry,  the 
architect  of  the  new  Houses  of  Parliament. 

Lichfield  Free  Grammar  School  was  also  founded  in  this  reign. 
Here  were  educated  Elias  Ashmole,  the  antiquary;  Gregory 
King,  the  herald;  George  Smalridge,  Bishop  of  Bristol;  Dr. 
Wollaston,  author  of  the  Religion  of  Nature;  Addison,  who 
was  the  son  of  a  Dean  of  Lichfield;  Lord  Chief-Justices  Willes 
and  Wilmot;  Lord  Chief  Baron  Parker;  Judges  Noel  and 
Lloyd;  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  who  was  born  at  Lichfield;  David 
Garrick ;  and  Henry  Salt,  the  traveler  in  Abyssinia.  As  early 
as  the  reign  of  Henry  III.,  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  founded  a 
religious  establishment,  but  it  subsequently  went  under  the  name 
of  ''The  Hospital  School;"  in  1740  it  merged  into  the  Gram 
mar  School. 


74  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Tunbridge  School,  in  Kent,  is  another  of  our  richly-endowed 

grammar-schools,  the  benefits  of  which  have  been  vastly  extend 
ed.  Tliis  school  was  founded  by  Sir  Andrew  Judd,  Knight,  a 
native  of  the  town  of  Tunbridge.  He  acquired  u  large  fortune 
in  London  by  trade  in  furs,  and  he  served  a>  Lord  Mayor  in 
1550,  when,  says  Ilolinshed.  "lie  erected  one  notable  Free  School 
at  Tunbridge,  in  Kent,  wherein  he  brought  up  and  nourished  in 
learning  grite  store  of  youth,  as  well  bred  in  that  shire  as  brought 
up  in  other  counties  adjoining.  A  noble  act,  and  corresponding 
to  others  that  have  been  done  by  like  worshipful  men,  and  others 
in  old  time,  in  the  same  cittie  of  London."  Sir  Andrew  Judd  ob 
tained  a  charter  from  Edward  VI.,  in  1553,  which  empowered 
him  to  buy  land  within  a  limited  sum  for  the  endowment  of  his 
school.  After  his  death,  this  property  was  conveyed  to  the 
Skinners'  Company  for  the  same  uses;  Sir  Andrew,  by  his  will, 
executed  in  1558,  devising  to  the  Company  certain  lands  and 
houses  "for  the  perpetual  maintenance  of  the  school  that  ha  had 
erected  at  Tunbridge."  Judd  Place,  east  and  west,  Tunbridge 
Place,  Burton  Crescent,  Mabledon  Place,  Judd,  Bidborough, 
Iladlow,  Speldhurst  and  Leigh  Streets,  in  London,  and  others  in 
Pancras  parish,  are  situated  on  this  property.  There  is  also 
property  in  Gracechurch  Street,  Cornhill,  Bishopsgate,  and  other 
] daces  in  the  city  of  London. 

For  a  long  time  the  produce  of  these  estates  wa>  little  more 
than  sufficient  to  defray  all  the  expenses  with  which  the  school 
had  been  charged  by  the  founder;  until  the  building  leases 
granted  on  the  property  in  Pancras  parish,  and  the  improvement 
in  Lead  en  hall  market,  raised  the  revenues  to  some  thousands  per 
annum  ;  and  at  the  expiration  of  all  the  present  leases,  it  is  stated 
that  the  endowment  of  Tunbridge  School  will  be  the  most  val 
uable  in  the  kingdom.  In  this  school,  all  whose  parents  live 
within  ten  miles,  in  Kent,  are  foundationers ;  there  are  several 
exhibitions,  a  fellowship  at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  etc.  The 
instruction  is  according  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Enii- 
land ;  whereas,  at  the  Birmingham  School  a  boy  may  be  ex 
cused  all  examination  "  in  the  fundamental  principles  and  doc 
trines  of  the  Christian  religion,"  though  examiners  are  appointed 
for  this  purpose.* 

The  Grammar  School  of  the  Bedford  Charity  is  likewise  of 
King  Edward's  foundation,  in  \~>~>'2.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  Eng 
lish  town  of  similar  extent  equal  to  Bedford  in  the  variety  and 
magnitude  of  its  charitable  and  educational  establishments.  But 

*  Thin  is  a  very  Kingular  provision  to  introduce  anionp  the  rules  of  one  of  King  Edward's 
fiuiidatioiis.  and  its  etl'ect  is  to  destroy  DIM-  «f  the  rluef  ul.jtvts  which  tin-  King  had  in 
view  in  establishing  thefo  schools. —  On  Gr'tmtnar  Schools,  by  titorge  Lung. 


Progress  of  Education.  75 

*lie  principal  benefactor  was  Sir  William  Harpur,  alderman  of 
London,  who  endowed  the  above  free-school  for  the  instruction 
of  the  children  of  the  town  "  in  grammar  and  good  manners  ; " 
conveying  to  the  corporation  13  acres  of  land  in  the  parish  of 
St.  Andrew,  Holborn,  for  the  support  of  the  school,  and  for  por 
tioning  poor  maidens  of  the  town ;  the  overplus,  if  any,  to  be 
given  in  alms  to  the  poor.  There  have  been  built  upon  the  land 
Lamb's  Conduit  Street,  Harpur  Street,  Theobald's  Road,  Bed 
ford  Street,  Bedford  Row,  New  North  Street,  and  some  smaller 
streets  ;  and  thus  the  property  has  gradually  risen  in  value  from 
below  150/  a-year,  a  quarter  of  a  century  since,  to  upward  of 
13,500/. !  The  income  of  the  Grammar  School  is  under  3000/. 
a-year;  there  are  about  1GO  scholars,  and  8  exhibitions.  The 
Warden  and  Fellows  of  Ne\v  College,  Oxford,  are  the  visitors. 

REIGN    OF    QUEEN    MARY. 

King  Edward's  aids  to  education  were  cut  short  by  his  early 
death.  His  successor,  Queen  Mary,  was  brought  up  from  her 
infancy  to  the  Roman  Catholic  religion ;  and  during  her  brief 
reign,  she  was  too  much  occupied  with  the  sanguinary  persecu 
tions  of  the  adherents  to  the  Reformed  doctrines,  to  attend  to  the 
business  of  public  education ;  little  is  recorded  of  her  girlhood, 
though  she  is  said  to  have  possessed  a  share  of  the  distinguished 
vigor  and  ability  of  her  family. 

Mary,  the  only  child  of  Henry  VIII.  and  Katherine  of  Arra- 
gon  who  survived  her  parents,  was  born  at  Greenwich,  in  1516. 
She  was  brought  up  from  infancy  under  the  care  of  her  mother, 
arid  Margaret,  Countess  of  Salisbury,  the  effect  of  whose 
instructions  was  not  impaired  by  the  subsequent  lessons  of  the 
learned  Ludovicus  Vives,  who,  though  somewhat  inclined  to  the 
English  religion,  was  appointed  by  Henry  to  be  her  Latin  tutor. 
In  her  tenth  year  a  separate  establishment  was  formed  for  her, 
and  she  was  sent  to  reside  at  Ludlow,  with  a  household  of  300 
persons,  and  with  the  Lady  Salisbury  for  her  governess.  The  time 
she  passed  there  was  probably  the  happiest  of  her  days,  for  her 
life  was  early  embittered  by  the  controversy  regarding  her  pa 
rents'  marriage.  Mary  was  brought  up  in  a  profound  venera 
tion  for  the  see  of  Rome,  by  her  mother,  with  whom  she  natu 
rally  sided ;  and  thus  she  gave  deep  offense  to  her  imperious 
father.  Entries  in  her  Privy  Purse  Account  from  1536  to  1544, 
published  by  Sir  Frederic  Madden,  show  Mary's  active  benevo 
lence  toward  the  poor,  compassion  for  prisoners,  friendly  re 
gard  and  liberality  to  her  servants  ;  and  also  indicate  elegant  pur 
suits  and  domestic  virtues,  for  which  in  general  she  does  not 
receive  credit. 


76  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


EDUCATION    OF    QTI  IN     1  I.I/.Al'.KTII. 

Elizabeth,  the  only  surviving  child  of  Henry  VIII.  by  Anne 
Boleyn,  was  born  at  Greenwich,  in  1533.  She  is  considered  by 
Ascham,  one  of  her  teachers,  as  having  attained  tlie  lead  of  the 
lettered  ladies  of  England  at  this  period.  Camden  describes  her 
as  "of  a  modest  gravity,  excellent  wit,  royal  soul,  happy  in< m- 
ory,  and  indefatigably  given  to  the  study  of  learning;  in>«miurh 
as  before  she  was  seventeen  years  of  age  she  well  understood  the 
Latin,  French,  and  Italian  tongues,  and  had  an  indifferent  knowl 
edge  of  the  Greek.  Neither  did  she  neglect  music,  so  far  as  it 
became  a  princess,  being  able  to  sing  sweetly,  and  play  handsome 
ly  on  the  lute.  With  Roger  Ascham,  who  was  her  tutor,  she 
read  over  Melancthon's  Common  Places,  all  Tully,  a  great  part 
of  the  histories  of  Titus  Livius,  certain  select  orations  of  Iso- 
crates  (whereof  two  she  turned  into  Latin),  Sophocles'  Trage 
dies,  and  the  New  Testament  in  Greek,  by  which  means  she 
framed  her  tongue  to  a  pure  and  elegant  way  of  speaking,"  etc. 
Ascham  tells  us  in  his  Schoolmaster,  that  Elizabeth  continued  her 
Greek  studies  subsequent  to  her  accession  to  the  throne.  "After 
dinner"  (at  Windsor  Castle,  10th  December,  1563),  he  says,  "I 
went  up  to  read  with  the  Queen's  Majestic :  we  read  there  to 
gether  in  the  Greek  tongue,  as  I  well  remember,  that  noble  ora 
tion  of  Demosthenes  against  JEschines  for  his  false  dealing  in  his 
embassage  to  Philip  of  Macedonia."  Elizabeth  was  for  some 
time  imprisoned  by  her  sister,  Queen  Mary,  at  Woodstock.  A 
New  Testament  is  still  preserved,  which  bears  the  initials'of  the 
captive  princess,  in  her  own  beautiful  handwriting,  with  the  fol 
lowing  mixed  allusion  to  her  religious  consolations  and  solitary 
life  :  "  I  walk  many  times  into  pleasant  fields  of  Holy  Scriptures, 
where  I  pluck  up  goodly  sentences  by  pruning,  eat  them  by  read 
ing,  chew  them  by  musing,  and  lay  them  up  at  length  in  the  high 
seat  of  memory ;  that,  having  tasted  their  sweetness,  I  may  the 
less  perceive  the  bitterness  of  this  miserable  life." 

Of  Elizabeth's  compositions  (a  few  of  which  are  in  verse), 
her  speeches  to  the  parliament  afford  evidence  of  superior  abili 
ty.  She,  like  her  royal  predecessor,  King  Alfred,  completed  an 
English  translation  of  Bonthius's  Consolations  of  Philosophy, 
which  translation,  partly  in  her  Majesty's  handwriting,  and  part 
ly  in  that  of  her  Secretary,  was  discovered  about  the  year  1830, 
in  the  State  Paper  Office. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  merits  mention  among  the  learned 
women  of  this  age.  She  was  sent  by  her  mother,  in  her  fifth 
year,  to  a  convent  in  France,  where  she  made  such  rapid  progress 
in  the  literature  and  accomplishments  of  the  time,  that  when  vis- 


Progress  of  Education.  77 

iting  her  in  1550,  her  mother,  Mary  of  Guise,  with  her  Scottish 
attendants,  burst  into  tears  of  joy.  Upon  her  removal  to  the 
French  court,  Mary  became  the  envy  of  her  sex,  surpassing  the 
most  accomplished  in  the  elegance  and  fluency  of  her  language, 
the  grace  and  loveliness  of  her  movements,  and  the  charm  of 
her  whole  manner  and  behavior.  She  wrote  with  elegance  in 
the  Latin  and  French  languages  ;  and  many  of  her  compositions 
have  been  preserved,  consisting  of  poems,  letters,  and  a  discourse 
of  royal  advice  to  her  son.  Like  Queen  Elizabeth,  she  greatly 
excelled  in  music,  especially  on  the  virginal,  an  instrument  in 
use  among  our  ancestors  prior  to  the  invention  of  the  spinnet 
and  harpsichord:  many  compositions  which  were  written  for 
Elizabeth,  are  known  in  the  musical  world  at  the  present  day ; 
and  the  identical  virginal  upon  which  the  queen  played  is  in  ex 
istence  in  Worcestershire* 

ROGER   ASCHAM HIS    "  SCHOOLMASTER." 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  this  period  was  Roger 
Ascham,  who  attained  such  proficiency  in  Greek,  that,  when  a 
boy,  he  read  lectures  in  it  to  other  boys  who  were  desirous  of  in 
struction  ;  he  also  learned  to  play  on  musical  instruments,  and 
was  one  of  the  few  who  then  excelled  in  the  mechanical  art  of 
writing.  He  took  the  degree  of  M.A.  at  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge  ;  he  commenced  tutor  when  20  years  of  age,  and  was 
one  of  those  who  restored  the  pronunciation  of  Greek  to  our 
own  modern  mode  of  utterance.  His  favorite  amusement  was 
archery,  upon  which  he  wrote  a  treatise,  entitled  Toxophilus,  in 
1544,  which  he  dedicated  to  King  Henry  VIII.,  who  rewarded 
him  with  a  pension  of  WL  a-year.  He  taught  the  Lady  Eliza 
beth  to  write  a  fair  hand,  and  for  two  years  he  instructed  her  in 
the  learned  languages :  he  informs  us  that  Elizabeth  understood 
Greek  better  than  the  clergy  of  Windsor.  He  was  next  appoint 
ed  Latin  Secretary  to  King  Edward:  upon  one  occasion,  he  is 
stated  to  have  composed  and  transcribed,  with  his  usual  ele 
gance,  in  three  days,  47  letters  to  princes  and  personages,  of 
whom  cardinals  were  the  lowest.  On  the  accession  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  he  was  reappointed  her  Latin  secretary  and  tutor,  and 
read  some  hours  with  the  Queen  every  day.  In  1563,  upon  the 
invitation  of  Sir  Richard  Sackville,  he  began  to  write  the  School 
master,  a  treatise  on  Education,  considered  by  Dr.  Johnson  to 
contain  the  best  advice  that  was  ever  given  for  the  study  of  lan 
guages.  Ascham  died  in  1568,  lamented  as  a  scholar  and  a  man  ; 
when  Queen  Elizabeth  heard  of  his  death,  she  exclaimed,  "  she 
would  rather  have  thrown  ten  thousand  pounds  into  the  sea,  than 
have  lost  her  Ascham."  His  great  benefit  to  literature  was  his 


78  School- Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

introduction  of  an  easy  and  natural  style  into  English  writing, 
instrad  <>f  the  pedantic  taste  of  his  day;  he  adopted.  In-  t<-ll-  us 
the  counsel  of  an  ancient  writer,  "to  speak  a-  the  common  peo 
ple  do,  to  think  as  wise  men  do."  One  of  Ascham's  tracts  (on 
the  Affairs  of  Germany)  is  described  by  Dr.  Johnson  a<  written 
"  in  a  style  which  to  the  ears  of  that  age  was  undoubtedly  mel 
lifluous,  and  which  is  now  a  very  valuable  specimen  of  genuine 
English." 

LADY  JANE  GREY  AND  HER  SCHOOLMASTER. 

Foremost  among  the  learned  women  of  this  time  was  the 
beauteous  Lady  Jane  Grey,  who  was  born  at  Bradgate,  on  the 
border  of  Charnwood  Forest,  four  miles  from  Leicester,  and  edu 
cated  by  Ay  liner,  her  father's  chaplain.  The  story  of  her  "al 
most  infancy  "  would  be  incredible  were  it  not  well  authenticated. 
Burton  calls  her  "  that  most  noble  and  admired  Princess  Lady 
Jane  Grey  ;  who  being  but  young,  at  the  age  of  seventeen  years, 
as  John  Bale  writeth,  attained  to  such  excellent  learning,  in  the 
Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin  tongues,  and  also  in  the  study  of  di 
vinity,  by  the  instruction  of  Mr.  Aylmer,  as  appeareth  by  her 
many  writings,  letters,  etc.,  that,  as  Mr.  Fox  saith  of  her,  had 
her  fortune  been  answerable  to  her  bringing  up,  undoubtedly 
she  might  have  been  compared  to  the  house  of  Vespasian,  Scm- 
pronius,  and  Cornelia,  mother  of  the  Gracchi  in  Rome,  and,  in 
these  days,  the  chiefest  men  of  the  universities."  At  Bradgatt; 
Roger  Ascham  paid  the  Lady  Jane  a  visit,  which  he  thus  de 
scribes  in  his  Schoolmaster : 

"  Before  I  \vent  into  Germanic,  I  came  to  Brodcgatc,  in  Leicestershire,  to  take  my  leave 
of  that  noble  Lady  Jane  Grey,  to  whom  I  was  exceeding  much  beholding.  Her  parentes, 
the  Duke  and  the  Dutchesse,  with  all  the  householdc.  Gentlemen  and  Gentleweemen,  were 
hunting  in  the  1'arke  :  I  found  her  in  her  chamber,  reading  Phtrdon  Platonis  in  Grceke, 
aii'l  th:it  with  as  much  delite,  as  some  gentleman  would  read  a  merry  tale  in  Bocase.  After 
salutation  and  dutie  done,  with  some  other  talke,  1  asked  her  why  shee  should  lecse  such 
pastime  in  the  1'arke.  Smilm-  she  an-wered  me:  I  \si~c.  all  their  sport  in  the  1'arke,  is 
but  a  shadow  to  that  pleasure,  that  I  finde  in  Plato :  Alas  good  folke,  they  never  felt  what 
true  pleasure  ment.  And  how  came  you,  Madame,  quoth  I,  to  this  deep*  knowledge  of 
pleasure .  ami  wh;it  (ii<l  chiefly  allure  you  vnto  it,  seeing  not  many  women,  but  very  fuwe 
men  have  attained  thereunto?  I  will  tell  you,  quoth  shee,  and  tell  you  a  troth,  which  per 
chance  ye  will  marvel  at.  One  of  the  greatest  benefits  that  ever  God  gauve  me,  is,  that 
hee  sente  so  sharp  und  seuere  parentes,  and  so  gentle  a  schoolmaster.  For  when  I  am  in 
presence  of  either  father  or  mother,  whether  I  speake,  keepe  silence,  sit,  stand,  or  go,  eate, 
drinke,  be  merry,  or  sad,  bee  swoiug,  playing,  dancing,  or  any  thing  els,  I  must  doe  it,  as 
it  were,  in  such  weight,  measure,  and  number,  euen  so  perfectly,  as  (Sod  made  the  world, 
or  ells,  I  am  so  sharply  taunted,  so  cruelly  threatened,  yea  presently  sometimes,  with 
pinches,  nippes,  and  bobbee,  and  other  waves,  which  I  will  not  name,  for  the  honor  I  beare 
them,  so  without  measure  misordered,  that  I  think  mysell  in  hell,  till  time  come,  that  I 
must  go  to  Mr.  Elmer,  who  teaches  me  so  gently,  so  pleasantly,  with  such  faire  allurements 
to  learning,  that  I  thinke  all  the  time  nothing,  while  I  am  with  him.  And  when  I  am 
called  from  him,  I  fall  on  weeping,  because,  whatever  I  do  els  but  learning,  is  full  of  greefe, 
trouble,  feare,  and  whole  mislikiug  vnto  mee;  and  thus  my  booke  hath  been  so  much  my 
pleasure  and  more,  that  in  respect  to  it,  all  other  pleasure,  in  very  deede,  bee  but  trifles 
and  troubles  vnto  mee.— I  remember  this  talke  gladly,  both  because  it  is  so  worthy  of  mem 
ory,  and  because  also  it  was  the  last  talke  that  ever  I  had,  and  the  last  time  that  ever  I  saw 
that  noble  and  worthy  lady."  * 

«  Scholemaster,  fol.  edit.  1571. 


Progress  of  Education.  79 

On  the  morning  of  her  execution,  the  Lady  Jane  wrote  a  let 
ter  in  Greek  to  her  sister  on  the  blank  leaf  of  a  Testament  in 
the  same  language,  and  in  her  note-book  three  sentences  in 
Greek,  Latin,  and  English,  of  which  the  last  is  as  follows  :  "  If 
my  faults  deserved  punishment,  my  youth,  at  least,  and  my  im 
prudence,  were  worthy  of  excuse.  God  arid  posterity  will  show 
me  favour." 

Fuller  says  of  Jane :  "  She  had  the  innocence  of  childhood, 
the  beautie  of  youth,  the  soliditie  of  middle,  the  gravitie  of  old 
age,  and  all  at  eighteen :  the  bust  of  a  princesse,  the  learning  of 
a  clerk,  the  life  of  a  saint,  yet  the  death  of  a  malefactor,  for  her 
parents'  offences." 

SIR    ANTHONY    COOK    AND     HIS     FOUR     LEARNED     DAUGHTERS. 

In  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  ladies  generally  understood  Italian, 
French,  the  lute,  often  some  Latin,  and  sometimes  the  use  of  the 
globes,  and  astronomy.  The  plan  of  the  education  of  females 
which  the  example  of  Sir  Thomas  More  had  rendered  popular, 
continued  to  be  pursued  among  the  superior  classes  of  the  com 
munity.  The  learned  languages,  which,  in  the  earlier  part  of 
Elizabeth's  reign,  contained  everything  elegant  in  literature,  still 
formed  a  requisite  of  fashionable  education ;  and  many  young 
ladies  could  not  only  translate  the  authors  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
but  compose  in  their  languages  with  considerable  elegance. 

Sir  Anthony  Cook,  whom  we  have  already  mentioned  as  tutor 
to  Edward  VI.,  bestowed  the  most  careful  education  on  his  four 
daughters ;  and  they  severally  rewarded  his  exertions,  by  becom 
ing  not  only  proficients  in  literature,  but  distinguished  for  their 
excellent  conduct  as  mothers  of  families.  Their  classical  ac 
quirements  made  them  conspicuous  even  among  the  women  of 
fashion  of  that  age.  Katherine,  who  became  Lady  Killigrew, 
wrote  Latin  Hexameters  and  Pentameters,  which  would  appear 
with  credit  in  the  Musce  Etonenses.  Mildred,  the  wife  of  Lord 
Burleigh,  is  described  by  Roger  Ascham  as  the  best  Greek  scholar 
among  the  young  women  of  England,  Lady  Jane  Grey  always 
excepted.  Anne,  the  mother  of  Francis  Bacon,  was  distinguished 
both  as  a  linguist  and  as  a  theologian.  She  corresponded  in 
Greek  with  Bishop  Jewell,  and  translated  his  Apoloyice  from  the 
Latin  so  correctly  that  neither  he  nor  Archbishop  Parker  could 
suggest  a  single  alteration.  She  also  translated  a  series  of  ser 
mons  on  fate  and  free-will,  from  the  Tuscan. 

Yet,  Lord  Macaulay  considers  the  highly-educated  ladies  of 
this  period,  and  their  pursuits,  to  have  been  unfairly  extolled  at 
the  expense  of  the  women  of  our  time,  through  one  very  obvi 
ous  and  very  important  circumstance  being  overlooked.  "  In 


80  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

the  time  of  our  Henry  VIII.  and  Edward  VI.,"  says  our  histo- 
rian,  "  a  person  who  did  not  read  Greek  and  Latin  could  read 

nothing,  or  next  to  nothing.  The  Italian  was  the  only  modern 
language,  which  presented  anything  that  could  be  called  a  litera 
ture.  All  the  valuable  books  extant  in  all  the  vernacular  dia 
lects  of  Europe  would  hardly  have  filled  a  single  shelf.  Eng 
land  did  not  yet  possess  Shakspeare'a  Plays  and  the  Fairy  Queen, 
nor  France  Montaigne's  Essays,  nor  Spain  Don  Quixote.  In 
looking  round  a  well-furnished  library,  how  many  English  or 
French  books  can  we  find  which  were  extant  when  Lady  Jane 
Grey  and  Queen  Elizabeth  received  their  education  ?  C'hauci-r. 
Gower,  Froissart,  Rabelais,  nearly  complete  the  list.  It  was, 
therefore,  absolutely  necessary  that  a  woman  should  be  unedu 
cated,  or  classically  educated.  Latin  was  then  the  language  of 
courts,  a<  well  as  of  the  schools;  of  diplomacy,  and  of  theologi 
cal  and  political  controversy.  This  is  no  longer  the  case :  the 
ancient  tongues  are  supplanted  by  the  modern  languages  of  Eu 
rope,  with  which  English  women  are  at  least  as  well  acquainted 
as  English  men.  When,  therefore,  we  compare  the  acquirements 
of  Lady  Jane  Grey  with  those  of  an  accomplished  young  woman 
of  our  own  time,  we  have  no  hesitation  in  awarding  the  superi 
ority  to  the  latter." 

A    TRUANT    PUNISHED    IN    THE    SIXTEENTH    CENTURY. 

Sir  Peter  Carew,  born  of  a  distinguished  family  in  Devon 
shire,  in  1514,  after  a  turbulent  youth,  took  an  active  part  in  the 
Continental  wars  of  that  period.  He  was  at  the  battle  of  Pa- 
via,  subsequently  became  a  favorite  of  Henry  VIII.,  and  lived 
through  a  part  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  His  life  was 
written  by  a  cotemporary  (John  Vowell,  alias  Hooker,  of  Ex 
eter),  and  describes  Peter,  "in  his  prime  days,  as  very  pert  and 
forward,  wherefore  his  father 

brought  him,  being  about  the  age  of  twelve  years,  to  Exeter,  to  school,  and  lodged  him 
with  one  Thomas  Hunt,  a  draper  and  alderman  of  that  rity,  and  did  put  him  to  school  to 
one  Frecrs,  then  master  of  the  Grammar  School  there ;  and  whether  it  were  that  he  was  in 
fear  of  the  said  Freer*,  for  he  was  counted  to  be  a  very  hard  and  cruel  master,  or  whether 
it  were  for  that  he  had  no  affection  tu  hi*  learning,  true  it  is  he  would  never  keep  his 
school,  but  was  a  daily  truant,  and  alwa\s  ranging;  whereof  the  schoolmaster  mUliking 
did  oftentimes  complain  unto  the  foresaid  Thoma*  Hunt,  his  host ;  upon  which  complaint, 
so  made,  the  said  Thomas  would  go,  and  send,  abroad  to  seek  out  the  said  Peter.  And, 
among  many  times  thus  seeking  him,  it  happened  that  he  found  him  about  the  walls  of  the 
said  city,  and,  he  running  to  take  him.  the  boy  climbed  up  upon  the  top  of  one  of  the 
highest  garrets  of  a  turret  of  the  said  wall,  and  would  not,  for  any  request,  come  down, 
saying  moreover  to  his  host  that,  if  he  did  press  loo  fast  upon  him,  he  would  surely  cast  him 
self  down  headlong  over  the  wall ;  and  then,  said  he.  '  I  shall  break  my  neck,  and  thou 
shall  be  hanged,  because  thou  makest  me  to  leap  down.1  His  host,  being  afraid  of  the  boy, 
departed,  and  left  some  to  watch  him, and  so  to  take  him,  as  soon  as  he  came  down  Hut 
forthwith  he  sent  to  ir  William  Carew,  and  did  advertise  him  of  this,  and  of  sundry  other 
shrewed  p»rt«  of  his  son  Peter,  who,  at.  his  next  coming  then  to  Exeter,  called  his  son  be 
fore  him,  tied  him  in  a  line,  and  delivered  him  to  one  of  his  servants  to  be  carried  about 
the  town,  a*  one  of  his  hounds,  and  they  led  him  home  to  Mohan's  ottery,  like  a  dog.  And 
after  that,  he  being  come  to  MODULI'S  ottery,  he  coupled  him  to  ont  of  his  hounds,  and  PO 
continued  him  for  a  time." 


Progress  of  Education.  81 

The  discipline  at  Oxford  was  about  this  time  very  rigid ;  for 
we  read  that  Samuel  Parker,  the  Puritan,  who  was  educated  at 
Wadham  College,  "  did,"  says  Anthony  a  Wood,  "  according  to 
his  former  breeding,  lead  a  strict  and  religious  life,  fasted,  prayed, 
with  other  students,  weekly  together,  and  for  their  refection, 
feeding  on  thin  broth,  made  of  oatmeal  and  water  only,  they 
were  commonly  called  gruellers" 

FLOGGING    IN    SCHOOLS. 

In  the  Middle  Ages,  we  read  of,  besides  stationary,  itinerant 
schoolmasters,  and  teachers  of  reading.  In  the  wood-cuts  of  a 
work  printed  by  Caxto'n,  the  schoolmaster  holds  a  rod  in  his 
hand,  and  the  boy  kneels  before  him.  The  practice  of  flogging 
is  sometimes  engraved  upon  the  seals  of  public  schools :  thus, 
the  seal  of  St.  Olave's  School,  dated  1576,  represents  the  Mas 
ter  sitting  in  a  high-backed  chair  at  his  desk,  on  which  is  a  book, 
and  the  rod  is  conspicuously  displayed  to  the  terror  of  five 
scholars  standing  before  him ;  and  the  seal  of  St.  Saviour's 
School,  1573,  represents  the  Master  seated  in  a  chair,  with  a 
group  of  thickly-trussed  pupils  before  him.  Dr.  Busby,  who 
was  50  years  head-master  of  Westminster  School,  is  said  to  have 
boasted  his  rod  to  be  the  sieve  to  prove  good  scholars  ;  but  his 
severity  is  traditional.  The  practice  of  flogging  in  Winchester 
is  illustrated  upon  the  walls  of  the  great  School,  as  already 
described. 

WESTMINSTER  COLLEGE  SCHOOL  FOUNDED. 

It  is  one  of  the  unfading  glories  of  ancient  Westminster  that 
it  has  been  a  seat  of  learning  since  the  time  when  it  was  a 
"  thorny  island,"  and  at  least  eight  centuries  since  was  rebuilt 
the  Abbey  Church  "  to  the  honour  of  God  and  St.  Peter."  The 
queen  of  the  Confessor  is  related  to  have  played  with  a  West 
minster  scholar  in  grammar,  verses,  and  logic,  as  she  met  him  in 
his  way  from  the  monastery  school  to  the  palace,  as  related  by 
the  chronicler  with  all  the  circumstantial  minuteness  of  the  ac 
count  of  a  royal  visit  of  yesterday.  Equally  direct  is  the  evi 
dence  that,  from  the  latter  part  of  the  reign  of  Edward  III., 
down  to  the  dissolution  of  the  Abbey,  a  salary  was  paid  to  a 
schoolmaster,  styled  "  Magister  Scholarium  pro  eruditions  puer- 
orum  grammaticorum"  who  was  distinguished  from  the  person 
who  taught  the  children  of  the  choir  to  sing. 

The  earliest  school  was  thus  an  appurtenance  of  the  monas 
tery  ;  and  is  included  in  the  draft  (in  the  'archives  of  the  Chap 
ter)  of  the  new  establishment  for  the  See  of  Westminster. 

During  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary,  Cardinal  Pole  appears  to 
G 


82  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

have  suffered  the  school  to  languish  wholly  unsupported.  Her 
successor  enforced  the  right  of  election  to  studentships,  restored 
the  revenues,  and  the  foundation  of  an  Upper  and  Lower  Master 
and  forty  scholars,  and  gave  the  present  statutes,  whence  Eliza 
beth  has  received  the  honorable  title  of  Foundress.  This  (^ueen 
u<Med  an  important  statute  to  regulate  the  mode  of  election  of 
novitiates  into  St.  Peter's  College.  Evelyn  has  recorded  one  of 
these  examinations  : 

In  1601,  May  13,  I  heard  and  saw  such  exercises  at  the  election  of  scholars  at  Westmin 
ster  School  to  U-  sent  to  the  University,  in  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  Arabic,  in  themes  and 
extemporary  verses,  with  such  readiness  imd  will  as  wonderfully  astonished  uie  in  such 
youths. 

Dean  Goodman  was  the  next  benefactor,  in  obtaining  a  perpet 
ual  grant  of  his  prebend  of  Chiswick,  to  be  a  place  of  refuge  for 
the  members  of  the  Chapter  and  College  whenever  pestilence 
might  be  desolating  Westminster.  During  this  Deanship,  the 
scholars  were  lodged  in  one  spacious  chamber,  their  commons 
were  regulated,  and  the  apartments  of  the  Masters  received  an 
increase  of  comfort  and  accommodation.  Among  the  earliest 
grants  is  a  perpetual  annuity  of  twenty  marks,  made  in  1594,  by 
Cecil,  Lord  High  Treasurer,  to  be  presented  as  gifts  to  scholars 
elected  to  either  of  the  Universities. 

Before  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  the  rudiments  of 
the  Greek  language  were  taught  to  boys  at  Westminster  School; 
and  Harrison,  in  his  preface  to  Holinshed,  about  158G,  states 
that  the  boys  of  the  three  great  collegiate  schools  (Winchester, 
Eton,  and  Westminster)  were  "  well  entered  in  the  knowledge 
of  the  Latin  and  Greek  tongues  and  rules  of  versifying." 

Dean  Goodman  had  for  his  successor  that  man  of  prayer  and  "  most  rare  preacher/'  Dr. 
Launcelot  Andrewes,  who  would  often  supply  the  place  of  the  Masters  for  a  week  together. 
It  was  one  of  his  simple  pleasures,  "  with  a  sweetness  and  compliance  with  the  recreations 
of  youth,"  always  to  be  attended,  in  his  litt.lc  retirements  to  the  cheerful  village  of  Chis 
wick,  by  two  of  his  scholars ;  and  often  thrice  in  the  week,  it  is  said,  he  assembled  about 
him  in  his  study  those  of  the  Upper  Form;  and  the  earnest  little  circle  frequently,  through 
the  whole  evening,  with  reverential  attention,  heard  his  exposition  of  the  Sacred  Text ; 
while  he  also  pointed  out  to  them  those  sources  of  knowledge  in  Greek  and  Latin,  from 
•which  he  had  gathered  his  own  stores  of  varied  learning. — Walcott'i  Memorials  of  West- 
mins  tr. 

Once  more  evil  days  fell  upon  the  rising  school.  The  Abbey 
was  desecrated,  and  the  families  of  the  scholars  were  threatened 
or  assailed  by  the  horrors  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  when  Parlia 
ment,  having  for  about  four  years  exercised  power  over  the 
School  through  a  Committee,  in  1649  assumed  a  protectorate, 
intrusting  the  management  of  the  School  to  a  government  of 
fifty  members  established  in  the  Deanery.  The  fee  or  inherit 
ance  of  many  of  the  Abbey  estates  was  sold  ;  old  rents  only  be 
ing  reserved  to  the  College.  This  control  lasted  until  the  Re 
storation  in  1GGO,  since  which  period  the  scholars  have  been 


Progress  of  Education.  83 

maintained  by  the  common  revenues  of  the  Collegiate  Church,  at 
a  cost  of  about  1200/.  a-year. 

The  Queen's  Scholars  wear  caps  and  gowns ;  and  there  are 
four  "l  Bishop's  Boys  "  educated  free,  who  wear  purple  gowns, 
and  have  GO/,  annually  amongst  them.  Besides  this  foundation, 
a  great  number  of  sons  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  are  educated 
here.  Of  the  Queen's  Scholars  an  examination  takes  place  in 
Rogation  week,  when  four  are  elected  to  Trinity  College,  Cam 
bridge,  and  four  to  Christchurch,  Oxford ;  scholarships  of  about 
GO/,  a-year. 

The  scholars  from  the  fourth,  fifth,  and  Shell  Forms  "  stand 
out*  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  grammatical  questionings,  on  the 
Wednesday  before  Ascension  Day,  in  the  presence  of  the  Head 
Master,  who  presides  as  umpire,  when  the  successful  competitors 
being  chosen  to  fill  the  vacancies,  "the  Captain  of  the  Election" 
is  chaired  round  Dean's  Yard,  or  the  school  court.  On  Rogation 
Tuesday,  a  dinner  is  given  to  the  electors,  and  all  persons  con 
nected  with  the  School,  by  the  Dean  and  Chapter ;  and  any  old 
Westminster  scholar  of  sufficient  rank  or  standing  is  entitled  to 
attend  it.  After  dinner,  epigrams  are  spoken  by  a  large  propor 
tion  of  the  Queen's  Scholars.  There  are  several  funds  available 
to  needy  scholars ;  and  the  whole  foundation  and  school  is  man 
aged  by  the  Dean  and  Chapter  of  Westminster. 

The  school  buildings  are  in  part  ancient.  You  enter  the 
School  court  from  the  Broad  Sanctuary,  through  an  archway  in 
a  block  of  houses  of  mediaeval  architecture.  The  porch  of  the 
School  is  stated  to  have  been  designed  by  Inigo  Jones.  On  the 
north  front  is  the  racket-court,  formed  against  part  of  the  west 
wall  of  the  dormitory.  The  venerable  School  itself,  once  the 
dormitory  of  the  monks,  ranges  behind  the  eastern  cloister  of 
the  Abbey.  It  is  a  long  and  spacious  building,  with  a  semicircu 
lar  recess  at  one  end,  the  Head  Master's  table  standing  in  front 
of  it ;  four  tiers  of  forms,  one  above  the  other,  are  ranged  along 
the  eastern  and  western  walls  ;  and  the  room  has  a  massive  open- 
timber  roof  of  chestnut.  The  Upper  and  Lower  Schools  are 
divided  by  a  bar,  which  formerly  bore  a  curtain  :  over  this  bar 
on  Shrove  Tuesday,  at  eleven  o'clock,  the  College  cook,  attended 
by  a  verger,  having  made  his  obeisance  to  the  Masters,  proceeds 
to  toss  a  pancake  into  the  Upper  School,  once  a  warning  to  pro 
ceed  to  dinner  in  the  Hall. 

An  interesting  tradition  is  attached  to  the  bar  at  the  time  it  bore  a  curtain.  Two  boys 
at  play,  by  chance  made  a  grievous  rent  in  the  pendent  drapery  ;  and  one  of  the  delinquents 
suffered  his  generous  companion  to  bear  the  penalty  of  the  offense  —  a  severe  flogging. 
Long  years  went  by  ;  the  Civil  War  had  parted  chief  friends ;  and  the  boys  bad  grown  up 
to  manhood,  unknown  to  each  other.  One  of  them,  now  become  a  Judge  and  sturdy  Re 
publican,  was  presiding  at  the  trial  of  some  captive  cavaliers,  and  was  ready  to  upbraid 
nd  sentence  them,  when  he  recognized  in  the  worn  features  of  one  gray-haired  vetwan. 


84  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

the  well -remembered  look  of  the  gnllant  boy  who  had  onco  borne  punishment  for  him.  Ity 
certain  answers,  which  in  the  examination  he  elicited,  his  suspicions  weiv  d.ntinne.1  :  and 
with  an  iiiiineiliate  resolve,  he  posted  to  I»ndon,  where,  by  his  intiiience  with  Oliver  Crom 
well,  he  succeeded  in  preserving  his  early  friend  from  the  scaffold. — Walcott's  Memorials 
of  Wettmins.er. 

The  School  is  fraught  with  pious  memories.  Hero  "that  sweet 
singer  of  the  Temple,  George  Herbert,"  was  reared  ;  and  that 
love  of  choral  music,  which  **  was  his  heaven  upon  earth."  was 
no  doubt,  implanted  here,  while  he  went  up  to  pray  in  the  glo 
rious  Abbey.  And  it  was  here  that  South,  in  his  loyal  child 
hood,  reader  of  the  Latin  prayers  for  the  morning,  publicly 
prayed  for  Charles  I.  by  name,  "  but  an  hour  or  two  at  most 
before  his  sacred  head  was  struck  off."  Nor  can  wo  forget 
among  the  ushers,  the  melody  of  whose  Latin  poems  had  led  him 
to  be  called  "Sweet  Yinny  Bourne;"  or  the  mastership  of  Busby, 
who  boasted  his  rod  to  be  the  sieve  to  prove  good  scholars,  and 
walked  with  covered  head  before  Charles  II.;  then  humbly  at 
the  <*ate  assured  his  Majesty  that  it  was  necessary  for  his  dignity 
before  his  boys  to  be  the  greatest  man  there,  even  though  a  king 
were  present.  How  successfully,  too,  is  Busby  commemorated 
in  the  whole-length  portrait  of  the  great  schoolmaster  standing 
beside  his  favorite  pupil,  Spratt.  Upon  the  walls  an-  inscribed 
many  great  names ;  and  in  the  library  is  preserved  part  of  the 
form  on  which  Dryden  once  sat,  and  on  which  his  autograph  is 
cut. 

In  the  Census  Alwnnorum,  or  list  of  foundation  scholars,  are 
Bishops  Overall  and  Kavis,  translators  of  the  Bible ;  Hakluyt, 
collector  of  Voyages;  Gunter,  inventor  of  the  Scale  ;  -  Master 
George  Herbert;"  the  poets  Cowley  and  Dryden;  South; 
Locke  ;  Bishops  Atterbury,  Spratt,  and  Pearce  ;  the  poet  Prior, 
and  Stepney  the  statesman  ;  Howe  and  "  Sweet  Vinny  Bourne," 
the  poets;  Churchill,  the  satirist;  Warren  Hastings;  Everard 
Home,  surgeon;  Dr.  Drury,  of  Harrow  School,  etc.  Among 
the  other  eminent  persons  educated  here  are  Lord  Burleigh  ; 
Ben  Jonson  ;  Nat  Lee;  Sir  Christopher  Wren ;  Ja-per  Mayne, 
the  poet;  Barton  Booth,  the  actor;  Blackmore,  Browne,  Dyer, 
Hammond,  Aaron  Hill,  Cow  per,  and  Southey,  the  poets:  Home 
Tooke  ;  Gibbon,  the  historian  ;  Cumberland,  the  dramatist ;  Col- 
man  the  Younger ;  Sir  Francis  Burdett ;  Harcourt,  Archbishop 
of  York  ;  the  Marquis  of  Lansdowne  ;  Lord  John  Russell ;  the 
Marquis  of  Anglesey;  Sir  John  Cam  Hobhouse  (Lord  Brough- 
ton)  ;  George  Bidder,  of  calculating  fame,  now  the  eminent 
civil  engineer. 

Among  the  eminent  Masters  are  Camden,  "  the  Pausanias  of 
England,"  who  had  Ben  Jonson  for  a  scholar;  and  Dr.  Bu>by, 


Progress  of  Education.  85 

who  had  Dryden,  and  who,  out  of  the  bench  of  bishops,  taught 
sixteen. 

The  College  Hall,  originally  the  Abbot's  refectory,  was  built 
by  Abbot  Litlington,  temp.  Edward  IIT. :  the  floor  is  paved  with 
chequered  Turkish  marble ;  at  the  south  end  is  a  musician's  gal 
lery,  now  used  as  a  pantry,  and  behind  are  butteries  and  hatches  ; 
at  the  north  side,  upon  a  dais,  is  the  high  table ;  those  below,  of 
chestnut-wood,  are  said  to  have  been  formed  out  of  the  wreck  of 
the  Armada.  The  roof-timbers  spring  from  carved  corbels,  with 
angels  bearing  shields  of  the  Confessor's  and  Abbot's  arms;  and 
a  small  louver  rises  above  the  central  hearth,  upon  which  in  win 
ter  a  wood  and  charcoal  fire  used  to  burn  until  the  year  1850.* 
The  Library  is  a  modern  Italian  room,  and  contains  several  me 
morials  of  the  attachment  of  "  Westminsters."  The  old  dormi 
tory,  built  in  1380,  was  the  granary  of  the  monastery;  and  was 
replaced  by  the  present  dormitory  in  1722,  from  the  designs  of 
the  Earl  of  Burlington :  its  walls  are  thickly  inscribed  with 
names.  Here  Latin  plays  are  represented  upon  the  second 
Thursday  in  December,  and  the  Monday  before  and  after  that 
day.  These  performances  superseded  the  old  Mysteries  and 
Moralities  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary,  when  the  boy  actors 
were  chiefly  the  acolytes,  who  served  at  mass.  Warton  men 
tions  that  this  "  liberal  exercise  is  yet  preserved,  and  in  the  spirit 
of  true  classical  purity,  at  the  College  of  Westminster."  Gar- 
rick  designed  scenery  for  these  pieces  ;  but  the  modern  dresses 
formerly  used  were  not  exchanged  for  Greek  costume  until  1839. 
The  plays  acted  of  late  years  have  been  the  Andria,  Phormio, 
Eunuch  us,  and  Adelphi,  of  Terence,  with  Latin  prologue  and 
epilogue  pleasantly  reflecting  in  their  humor  events  of  the  day. 
Two  new  scenes  were  drawn  for  the  theatre,  in  1857,  by  Pro 
fessor  Cockerell,  R.A. 

Boating  is  a  favorite  amusement  of  the  Westminsters,  who 
have  often  contested  the  championship  of  the  Thames  with  Eton. 
On  May  4,  1837,  the  Westminsters  won  a  match  at  Eton  ;  when, 
by  desire  of  William  IV.,  the  victors  visited  Windsor  Castle,  and 
were  there  received  by  the  good-natured  king. 

A   POOR    WESTMINSTER    SCHOLAR. 

Dr.  Stubbe,  the  eminent  physician,  one  of  the  most  learned 
men  of  his  time,  was  born  in  1631,  near-Spilsby,  in  Lincolnshire, 
whence  his  father,  an  Anabaptist  minister,  removed  to  Ireland ; 
but  when  the  Rebellion  broke  out  in  that  country  in  1G41,  his 
mother  fled  with  him  to  London,  walking  thither  on  foot  from 

*  Fires  continued  to  be  made  on  a  hearth  in  the  middle  of  the  hall  called  the  reredos, 
,ti  many  college  halls  in  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  uutil  about  the  year  1820. 


86  School-Days  cf  Eminent   Men. 

Liverpool.  She  maintained  herself  in  the  metropolis  by  her 
needle,  and  sent  her  son,  then  about  ten  yeans  old,  to  West 
minster  School.  Here  he  frequently  obtained  pecuniary  relief 
from  his  school-fellows,  a.s  a  remuneration  for  writing  their 
exercises.  Busby  was  struck  by  Stubbe's  rare  talents  and  assi 
duity,  and  introduced  him  to  Sir  Henry  Vane,  who  happened  one 
day  to  come  into  the  school ;  when  Sir  Henry  relieved  the  im 
mediate  wants  of  the  lad,  and  remained  for  ever  afterward  his 
steady  friend ;  assisting  him  at  his  election  to  Oxford,  where  he 
became  of  considerable  consequence  ;  his  reputation  for  learn 
ing  increased  daily,  and  he  used  to  converse  fluently  in  Greek 
in  the  public  schools. 

MERCHANT     TAYLORS*    SCHOOL    FOUNDED. 

The  royal  example  of  Edward  VI.  was  nobly  followed  by  one 
of  the  great  City  companies  founding,  in  the  succeeding  reign,  a 
grammar-school  in  the  metropolis,  principally  through  the  per 
sonal  benevolence  of  its  members.  In  the  year  loGl,  the  Mer 
chant  Taylors'  Company,  chiefly  by  the  gift  of  500/.,  and  other 
subscriptions  of  members  of  the  Court  of  Assistants,  raised  a 
fund  for  this  great  educational  object.  Among  the  contributors 
was  Sir  Thomas  White,  some  time  master  of  the  Company,  and 
who  had  recently  founded  St.  John's  College,  Oxford.  With  the 
above  fund,  the  generous  band  of  citizens  purchased  a  certain 
property  lying  between  Cannon-street  and  the  Thames,  part  of 
"  the  Manor  of  the  Rose,"  a  palace  originally  built  by  Sir  John 
Poultney,  Knt.,  five  times  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  in  the  reign 
of  Edward  III.  In  these  premises,  consisting  principally  of  a 
gate-house  and  court-yard,  the  Company  established  their  school. 
The  Great  Fire,  however,  destroyed  the  ancient  buildings ;  and  in 
1675,  the  present  school  and  the  head-master's  residence  were 
erected:  it  includes  a  library  (on  the  site  of  an  ancient  chapel), 
which  contains  a  fair  collection  of  theological  and  classical  works. 
The  school  now  consists  of  about  200  boys,  who  are  charged  10/. 
per  annum  each :  they  are  admitted  at  any  age,  on  the  nomination 
of  the  members  of  the  Court  of  the  Conpany  in  rotation :  and 
the  scholars  may  remain  until  the  Monday  after  St.  John  the 
Baptist's  Day  preceding  their  nineteenth  birthday.  Hebrew, 
Greek,  and  Latin  have  been  taught  since  the  foundation  of  the 
school ;  mathematics,  writing,  and  arithmetic  were  added  in  1829, 
and  French  and  modern  history  in  1840.  There  is  no  property 
belonging  to  the  school  except  the  buildings:  it  is  supported 
by  the  Merchant  Taylors'  Company  out  of  their  several  **  funds," 
without  any  specific  fund  being  set  apart  for  that  object ;  it  has, 
therefore,  been  exempt  from  the  inquiry  of  the  Charity  Commis- 


Progress  of  Education.  87 

sioners ;  but,  like  Winchester,  Eton,  and  Westminister,  it  has  a 
college  almost  appropriated  to  its  scholars.  Thirty-seven  out  of 
the  fifty  fellowships  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  and  other 
exhibitions  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  are  attached  to  it ;  the 
election  to  which  takes  place  annually  on  St.  Barnabas's  Day 
(June  11),  when  the  school  prizes  are  distributed;  there  is 
another  speech  day  (Doctors'  Day)  in  December.  Plays  were 
formerly  acted  by  the  boys  of  this  school,  as  at  Westminster:  the 
earliest  instance  known  was  in  1665,  when  the  scholars  per 
formed,  in  the  old  Hall  of  the  Merchant  Taylors'  Company, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  comedy  of  "  Love's  Pilgrimage,"  but 
under  order  that  this  "  should  bee  noe  precident  for  the  future." 
Garrick,  who  was  a  personal  friend  of  the  head-master  in  his 
time,  took  great  interest  in  these  performances.  They  have 
been  continued  to  our  day,  in  a  noble  crypt,  which  is  all  that 
remains  of  the  manorial  mansion  of  the  Rose.  The  School 
Feasts  and  Anniversary  Feasts  of  the  old  scholars  have,  how 
ever,  long  been  held  in  the  Company's  Hall.  The  School  has 
ever  been  famed  for  the  classical  attainments  and  sound  Prot 
estant  principles  of  her  sons,  whence  the  boys  have  been  called 
"  Loyalty's  Bull-dogs."  When  James  II.  recommended  a  per 
son  suspected  of  Popery  to  be  head-master  of  the  School,  the 
Company  prevailed  on  the  King  to  recall  his  recommendation ; 
and  in  1796,  great  was  the  scandal  to  the  foundation  when  two 
mischievous  scholars  hoisted  a  tri- colored  flag  on  the  ramparts  of 
the  Tower,  an  act  which  was  indignantly  repudiated  by  their 
school-fellows,  and  by  one  of  the  under-masters  chronicling  the 
affair  in  a  song  which  became  very  popular. 

Amongst  the  eminent  scholars  educated  at  Merchant  Taylors' 
were,  Bishops  Andrewes,  Dove,  and  Tomson,  three  of  the  trans 
lators  of  the  Bible ;  Archbishop  Juxon,  who  attended  Charles 
I.  to  the  scaffold ;  Bishop  Hopkins  (of  Londonderry)  ;  Archbish 
ops  Sir  William  Dawes,  Gilbert,  and  Boulter;  Bishop  Van 
Mildert,  and  eleven  other  prelates ;  Titus  Oates,  who  contrived 
the  "  Popish  Plot ;"  Sir  James  Whitelocke,  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench ;  Bulstrode  Whitelocke,  who  wrote  his  "  Memorials ;" 
Shirley,  the  dramatic  poet,  cotemporary  with  Massinger; 
Charles  Wheatly,  the  ritualist ;  Neale,  the  historian  of  the  Puri 
tans  ;  Edmund  Calamy,  and  his  grandson  Edmund,  the  Non 
conformists —  the  former  died  in  1666,  from  seeing  London  in 
ashes  after  the  Great  Fire;  the  great* Lord  Clive;  Dr.  Vicesi- 
mus  Knox,  subsequently  celebrated  as  the  head-master  of  Tun- 
bridge  School ;  Dr.  William  Lowth,  the  learned  classic  and 
theologian  ;  Nicholas  Amhurst,  associated  with  Bolingbroke  and 
Pulteney  in  the  Craftsman  ;  Charles  Mathews  the  elder,  come- 


88  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

dian  ;  Lit  ut.  Col.  Denham,  the  explorer  of  Central  Africa;  and 
J.  L.  Adolphus,  the  barrister,  who  wrote  a  History  of  the  Rci</n 
of  George  III.  Also,  Sir  John  Dodson,  Queen's  Advocate  ;  vSir 
Hi-nry  Ellis,  and  Samuel  Birch,  of  the  British  Museum;  John 
Gough  Nichols,  F.S.A.,  etc. 

GRESHAM    COLLEGE    FOUNDED. 

In  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  one  of  her  merchant- 
princes —  Flos  Mercatorum,  as  he  was  deservedly  styled  — 
evinced  his  love  of  the  higher  branches  of  knowledge  by  the 
foundation  and  endowment  of  a  College  which  considerably 
a— i-ted  the  promotion  of  science  in  England  in  the  early  part 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  founder  was  Sir  Thomas  (ire- 
sham,  the  originator  of  the  Royal  Exchange,  the  rents  arising 
from  which,  together  with  his  mansion,  on  the  death  of  Lady 
Gresham,  in  1597,  to  be  vested  in  the  Corporation  of  London 
and  the  Mercers'  Company.  They  were  conjointly  to  nominate 
seven  professors,  to  lecture  successively,  one  on  each  day  of  the 
k,  their  salaries  being  50/.  per  annum:  a  more  liberal  remu 
neration  than  Henry  VIII.  had  appointed  for  the  Regius  Profes 
sors  of  Divinity  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  equivalent  to 
400/.  or  oOO/.  at  the  present  day.  The  Lectures  commenced 
June,  1597,  in  Gresham's  mansion,  which,  with  alms-houses  and 
gardens,  extended  from  Bishopsgate-street  westward  into  Broad- 
street.  Here  the  Royal  Society  originated  in  1G45,  and  met 
(with  interruptions)  until  1710.  The  buildings  were  then  neg- 
livted,  and  in  17G8  were  taken  down,  the  Excise'Ofiice  being 
built  upon  their  site;  and  the  reading  of  the  Lectures  was  trans 
ferred  to  a  room  on  the  south-east  side  of  the  Royal  Exchange ; 
the  lecturers'  salaries  being  raised  to  100/.  each,  as  an  equiva 
lent  for  the  lodging  they  had  in  the  old  College,  of  which  there 
is  a  view,  by  Vertue,  in  Ward's  Lives  of  the  Gresham  Professors, 
1710.  On  the  rebuilding  of  the  Royal  Exchange,  the  Gresham 
Committee  provided  for  the  College,  in  Basinghall-street,  at  the 
corner  of  Oateaton-street,  a  handsome  stone  edifice,  in  the 
enriched  Roman  style,  with  a  Corinthian  entrance-portico.  It 
contains  a  large  library,  and  professors'  rooms;  and  a  lecture- 
room,  or  theatre,  capable  of  holding  oOO  persons.  The  Lectures, 
on  Astronomy,  Physic,  Law,  Divinity,  Rhetoric,  Geometry,  and 
Music,  are  here  read  to  the  public  gratis,  during  "Term  Time," 
daily,  except  Sundays,  in*  Latin  and  English. 

STATESMEN,  POETS,  AND  DRAMATISTS  OF    ELIZABETH'S    REIGN. 

We  now  approach  a  galaxy  of  bright  stars  of  the  Elizabethan 
ug*,  that  it  may  be  convenient  here  to  group  together;  although 


Progress  of  Education.  89 

many  incidents  of  their  boyhood  and  school-days  will  be  related 
elsewhere  in  this  volume. 

At  the  grammar  school  were  taught  the  illustrious  men  of  this 
brilliant  period  of  our  history.  The  great  Lord  Burleigh,  who 
was  upward  of  50  years  prime  minister  of  England,  was  placed 
successively  at  the  grammar  schools  of  Grant  ham  and  Stam 
ford;  at  the  age  of  15  he  was  removed  to  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge ;  at  1 6  he  delivered  a  lecture  on  the  logic  of  the 
schools,  and  in  three  years  afterward  another  on  the  Greek 
language;  and  in  later  life,  books,  and  the  superintendence  of 
his  garden  at  Theobalds,  formed  his  chief  amusements  in  his  few 
hours  of  leisure. 

Two  of  the  most  accomplished  men  of  this  age  were  "the 
Admirable  Crichton,"  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  both  born  in  the 
same  year,  1561.  Crichton  was  educated  at  St.  Andrews,  then 
the  most  celebrated  seminary  in  Scotland :  at  fourteen  he  took  his 
degree  of  Master  of  Arts.  Sidney  was  born  at  Penshurst,  in 
Kent,  and  was  sent  at  an  early  age  to  the  Royal  Free  Grammar 
School  at  Shrewsbury,  which  had  then  been  founded  but  ten 
years.  This  school  is  free  to  sons  of  ancient  burgess  freemen  of 
Shrewsbury:  it  has  an  income  from  endowment  of  3100/.  per 
annum,  and  several  exhibitions. 

Among  the  learned  ladies  of  the  above  period  was  Mary 
Sidney,  Countess  of  Pembroke,  "Sidney's  sister,  and  Pembroke's 
mother:"  for  her  amusement  Sir  Philip  Sidney  wrote  his  heroic 
romance,  entitled  The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia. 

Michael  Dray  ton,  stated  to  have  been  born  in  Warwickshire 
about  1563,  and  the  son  of  a  butcher,  discovered  in  his  earliest 
years  such  proofs  of  a  superior  mind,  that  he  was  made  page  to 
a  person  of  quality,  —  a  situation  which  was  not  in  that  age 
thought  too  humble  for  the  sons  of  gentlemen.  He  is  said  to 
have  studied  at  Oxford,  and  in  early  life  was  warmly  patronized 
by  persons  of  consequence.  His  Polyolbion,  a  poetical  descrip 
tion  of  England,  is  so  accurate  in  its  information  as  to  be  quoted 
as  an  authority  by  antiquaries :  Drayton  was  poet-laureate  in 
1626. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  may  be  described  as  born  and  bred 
"fine  gentlemen,"  educated  in  all  the  conventionalities  and 
artificial  manners  of  their  time.  Massinger,  the  son  of  one  of 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke's  retainers  (employed  as  an  official  mes 
senger  to  Queen  Elizabeth),  was  born  at  Salisbury,  and  was  sent 
early  to  Oxford  by  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  the  patron  of  logic  and 
philosophy ;  but  the  young  Massinger  passed  much  of  his  college 
time  in  reading  poetry  and  romances. 

Of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  school-days  we  have  scanty  record ; 


90  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

but  it  is  stated  that  about  1/508,  he  became  a  commoner  of  Oriel 
College,  Oxford,  and  Fuller  adds,  of  Christchurch  also.  At 
Oriel,  he  proved  "the  ornament  of  the  junior  fry,"  and  was  a 
proficient  in  oratory  and  philosophy.  His  History  of  the  World 
is  one  of  the  noblest  works  of  a  noble  mind;  and  his  Counsels 
to  his  Son  is  a  treasure  of  great  value. 

Neither  have  we  any  particulars  of  Spenser's  education,  until 
we  find  him,  in  1G59,  entered  a  sizar  (one  of  the  humblest  class  of 
students)  of  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  continued 
to  attend  seven  years,  taking  his  degree  of  M.A.  in  1570. 

Ben  Jonson  was  born  in  Ilartshorne-lane,  Strand,  in  1574; 
he  was  sent  early  to  "a  private  school  in  St.  Martin's  Church;" 
and  next  to  WeMminster  School,  under  Camden,  then  junior 
master.  He  traveled  with  the  son  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  on  the 
Continent,  and  on  his  return  went  to  Cambridge.  Jonson  is 
said  to  have  worked  with  his  father-in-law,  a  bricklayer,  in 
building  the  garden  wall  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  when,  as  Fuller  says. 
"having  a  trowel  in  his  hand,  he  had  a  book  in  his  pocket;"  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  this  statement 

We  now  come  to  the  most  illustrious  cotemporary  of  Ben 
Jonson,  born  ten  years  earlier,  in  15 04,  William  Shakspeare, 
who  was  educated  at  the  Grammar  School  of  Stratford-upon- 
Avon,  of  which  we  shall  speak  more  at  length  hereafter. 

William  Harvey,  the  author  of  the  true  theory  of  the  circula 
tion  of  the  blood  (and,  perhaps,  the  only  man  who  ever  lived 
to  see  his  own  discovery  established  in  his  lifetime),  was  born  at 
Folkestone,  in  1578,  and  at  ten  years  of  age  was  sent  to  the 
Grammar  School  at  Canterbury;  and  having  there  laid  the 
foundation  of  Classical  learning,  he  was  removed  to  Cambridge 
in  151)3.  In  five  years  he  left  the  University,  and  went  abroad 
for  the  acquisition  of  medical  knowledge,  and  fixed  himself  in 
his  23d  year  at  Padua  University,  where  he  took  his  doctor's 
degree  in  1G02,  being  then  only  24  years  old. 

RUGBT    SCHOOL    FOUNDED. 

Our  narrative  has  now  reached  that  "critical  epoch  in  the 
advance  of  civilization,  when  the  discovery  of  a  new  world  had 
opened  space  to  the  expanding  intellect  of  the  old  one,  which 
had  just  then  been  awakened  from  the  long  slumber  of  the  dark 
ages  by  the  restoration  of  classical  literature  ;  and  a  new  life  wa- 
thus  infused  into  the  sacred  cause  ef  education.  Luther  had 
taught  the  laity  the  weapon  with  which  they  could  wrest  from 
the  papal  clergy  the  monopoly  of  knowledge;  and  the  dissolu 
tion  of  monasteries  had  thrown  into  the  market  lands  hitherto 


Progress  of  Education.  91 

locked  up  in  mortmain,  with  which  far-sighted  benefactors  were 
enabled  to  endow  their  new  foundations.* 

One  of  the  first  to  seize  this  prevalent  spirit  was  Lawrence 
Sheriff,  a  native  of  Rugby,  who  had  accumulated  a  large  fortune 
in  dealing  with  the  fruits  and  spices  of  the  West  Indies.  He 
was  warden  of  the  Grocers'  Company  in  1566;  and  in  Fox's 
Book  of  Martyrs  he  is  spoken  of  as  "servant  to  the  Lady  Eliz 
abeth,  and  sworn  unto  her  Grace,"  which  seems  to  imply  that  he 
was  "grocer  to  the  Queen:"  he  kept  shop  "near  to  Newgate 
Market."  Sheriff  died  in  1567,  and  by  his  last  will,  made  seven 
weeks  previously,  bequeathed  a  third  of  his  Middlesex  estate 
to  the  foundation  of  "a  fair  and  convenient  school-house,  and  to  the 
maintaining  of  an  honest,  discreet,  and  learned  man  to  teach  gram 
mar;"  the  rents  of  that  third,  which  then  amounted  to  8/.  annu 
ally,  had  swelled  in  1825  to  above  5500/.  The  estate  in  Lamb's 
Conduit  Fields  (originally  Close)  adjoins  the  Foundling  Hospi 
tal,  and  comprises  Lamb's  Conduit,  Milman,  New  and  Great 
Ormond,  and  other  adjacent  streets. 

Immediately  upon  the  founder's  death,  the  school  was  com 
menced  in  a  building  in  the  rear  of  the  house  assigned  for  the 
master ;  it  consisted  of  one  large  room,  having  no  playground 
attached.  The  first  page  of  the  school  register,  commencing  in 
1675,  shows  that  of  the  26  entrances  in  that  year,  12. were  boys 
not  upon  the  foundation,  and  one  of  them  came  even  from  Cum 
berland.  The  school  now  took  a  higher  stamp  ;  and  early  in  the 
list  we  find  the  Earls  of  Stamford  and  Peterborough,  the  Lords 
Craven,  Griffin,  Stawell,  and  Ward,  the  younger  sons  of  the 
houses  of  Cecil  and  Greville,  and  many  of  the  baronets  of  the 
adjacent  counties. 

The  school  buildings  were  from  time  to  time  enlarged  ;  until 
the  improved  value  of  the  endowment  enabled  the  trustees  to 
commence,  in  1809,  the  present  structure,  designed  by  Hakewill, 
in  the  Elizabethan  style,  and  built  nearly  upon  the  same  spot  as 
the  first  humble  dwelling.  The  buildings  consist  of  cloisters  on 
three  sides  of  a  court;  the  Great  School,  and  the  French  and 
Writing  Schools;  the  dining  hall,  and  the  chapel;  and  the  mas 
ter's  house,  where  and  in  the  town  the  boys  are  lodged.  The 
group  of  buildings  cost  35,000/.,  but  are  of  "poor  sham  Gothic." 
A  library  has  since  been  added.  The  only  former  playground 
was  the  churchyard  ;  but  Rugby  has  now  its  bowling-green  close, 
with  its  tall  spiral  elms ;  and  its  playground,  where  cricket  and 
foot-ball  are  followed  out-of-doors  with  no  less  zest  and  delight 
than  literature  is  pursued  within. 

*  Quarterly  Reyiew,  No.  204. 


92  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Foot-Kill  is  thf  panic,  par  rxrf'lfnrt,  of  Rugby,  as  cricket  is  of  Eton.  The  f.isrination  of 
this  L'l-ntlf  pastime  is  its  mimic  war,  and  it  is  waged  with  the  individual  prowess  of  the 
HoiiK-rio  con  flirts,  and  with  the  personal  valor  of  the  Orlandos  of  medijrval  chivalry,  be 
fore  villainous  saltpetre  had  reduced  the  Knigh-errant  to  the  ranks.  The  play  is  played 
out  by  boys  witli  that  dogged  determination  to  win,  that  endurance  of  pain,  that  bravery 
of  combative  spirit,  by  which  the  adult  is  trained  to  face  the  cannon-ball  with  equal  alac 
rity.—  Quarterly  Revieiv,  No.  204. 

The  instruction  at  Rugby  retains  the  leading  characteristics  of 
the  old  school,  beinjr  based  on  a  thoroughly  grounded  study  of 
Greek  and  Latin.  But  the  treatment  has  been  much  improved: 
formerly  the  boys>  were  ill-used,  half  imprisoned,  and  put  on  the 
smallest  rations,  a  plentiful  allowance  of  rod  excepted ;  and  a 
grim  tower  is  pointed  out  in  which  a  late  pedagogue,  Dr.  Wooll, 
was  accustomed  to  inflict  the  birch  unsparingly.  Neverthele.-s, 
in  "\Vool  1's  time  were  added  six  exhibitions  to  the  eight  already 
instituted  ;  books  were  first  given  as  prizes  for  composition  ;  and 
the  successful  candidates  recited  their  poems  before  the  trustees, 
thus  establishing  the  Speeches. 

To  Dr.  Wooll  *  succeeded  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  the  second 
and  moral  founder  of  Rugby.  Of  the  great  change  which  he 
introduced  in  the  face  of  education  here,  we  can  speak  but  in 
brief.  Soon  after  he  had  entered  upon  his  office,  he  made  this 
memorable  declaration  upon  the  expulsion  of  some  incorrigible 
pupils  :  "  It  is  not  necessary  that  this  should  be  a  school  of  three 
hundred,  or  one  hundred,  or  of  fifty  boys ;  but  it  is  necessary 
that  it  should  be  a  school  of  Christian  gentlemen." 

The  three  ends  at  which  Arnold  aimed  were  —  first,  to  incul 
cate  religious  and  moral  principle,  then  gentlemanly  conduct,  and 
lastly,  intellectual  ability.  One  of  his  principal  holds  was  in  his 
boy  sermons  —  that  is,  in  sermons  to  which  the  young  congrega 
tion  could  and  did  listen,  and  of  which  he  was  the  absolute  in 
ventor.  The  feelings  of  love,  reverence,  and  confidence  which 
he  inspired,  led  his  pupils  to  place  implicit  trust  on  his  decision, 
and  to  esteem  his  approbation  as  their  highest  reward.  His 
government  of  the  school  was  no  reign  of  terror ;  he  resorted 
to  reasoning  and  talking  as  his  first  step,  which  failing,  he  ap 
plied  the  rod  as  his  ultima  ratio*  and  this  for  misdemeanors  inev 
itable  to  youth  —  lying,  for  instance  —  and  best  cured  by  birch. 
lie  was  not  opposed  IQ  fagging,  which  boys  accept  as  part  and 
parcel  of  the  institution  of  schools,  and  as  the  servitude  of  their 
feudal  system  ;  all  he  aimed  to  do  was  to  regulate,  and,  as  it 
were,  to  legalize  the  exercise  of  it.  The  keystone  of  his  govern 
ment  was  in  the  Sixth  Form,  which  he  held  to  be  an  intermedi 
ate  power  between  the  master  and  masses  of  the  school ;  the 

*  Dr.  Wooll  was  small  in  utature,  but  powerful  in  stripes  ;  and  under  his  head-master 
ship  Lord  Lyttleton  suggested  for  the  grim  closet  in  which  the  rods  are  kept,  the  witty 
liiotto:  "  (in fit  Cry  and  Little  Wool.'' — Set  the  Book  of  Rugby  School,  its  History  and 
Daily  Lift.  1866. 


Progress  of  Education.  93 

value  of  which  internal  police  he  had  learned  from  the  Prefects 
at  Winchester.  But  he  carefully  watched  over  this  delegated 
authority,  and  put  down  any  abuse  of  its  power.  The  Pra?pos- 
itors  themselves  wrere  no  less  benefited.  "  By  appealing  to  their 
honor,  by  fostering  their  self-respect,  and  calling  out  their  powers 
of  governing  their  inferiors,  he  ripened  their  manhood,  and  they 
early  learnt  habits  of  command ;  and  this  system,  found  to  work 
so  well,  is  continued,  and  with  many  of  its  excellent  principles, 
is  now  acted  on  in  most  of  the  chief  public  schools  of  England."* 
Dr.  Arnold  died  in  1841,  on  the  day  preceding  his  forty-seventh 
birth-day,  having  presided  over  the  school  for  fourteen  years : 
in  the  chapel  at  Rugby  he  rests  from  his  labors,  surrounded  by 
those  of  his  pupils  who  have  been  prematurely  cut  off.  "  Yet," 
touchingly  says  the  Rugbeian  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review, 
"  if  they  have  known  few  of  the  pleasures  of  this  world,  they  at 
least  have  not,  like  him,  felt  many  of  its  sorrows,  and  death  has 
not  separated  those  who  in  life  were  united." 

Dr.  Arnold  procured  from  the  Crown  a  high  mark  of  royal 
favor  —  her  Majesty  having  founded  an  annual  prize  of  a  Gold 
Medal,  to  which  several  other  prizes  have  b€en  added.  Dr.  Ar 
nold  was  succeeded  in  the  head-mastership  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Tait, 
who  retired  on  his  appointment  to  the  Deanery  of  Carlisle,  in 
1849  ;  and  who,  in  1856,  was  preferred  to  the  bishopric  of  Lon 
don. 

In  the  list  of  eminent  Rugbeians  are  the  Rev.  John  Parkhurst,  the  Greek  and  Hebrew 
lexicographer;  Sir  Ralph  Abercrombie,  the  hero  of  Alexandria  ;  William  Bray,  F.S.A., 
the  historian  of  Surrey:  Dr.  Lcgge,  Bishop  of  Oxford;  Sir  Henry  Halford,  Bart.,  Presi 
dent  of  the  College  of  Physicians  ;  Dr.  Butler,  editor  of  2Eschylus,  etc. 

HARROW    SCHOOL    FOUNDED.* 

At  the  village  of  Ilarrow-on-the-IIill,  ten  miles  north-west  of 
London  —  where  Lanfranc  built  a  church,  Thomas  a  Becket  re- 
si' led,  and  Wolsey  was  rector  —  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  there 
lived  a  substantial  yeoman  named  John  Lyon.  For  many  years 
previous  to  his  death  he  had  appropriated  20  marks  annually  to 
the  instruction  of  poor  children;  and  in  1571,  he  procured  let 
ters  patent  and  a  royal  charter  from  the  Queen,  recognizing  the 
foundation  of  a  Free  Grammar  School,  for  the  government  of 
which,  in  1592,  he  drew  up  the  orders,  statutes,  and  rules.  The 
head-master  is  directed  to  be,  "on  no  account,  below  the  degree 
of  Master  of  Arts  ; "  or  the  usher  "  under  that  of  a  Bachelor  of 
Arts."  They  are  always  to  be  "  single  men,  unmarried."  The 
stipends  of  the  masters  are  settled ;  the  forms  specified ;  the 

*  Quarterly  Review.  No.  204.  Review  of  Tom  Brown's  School-days,  a  real  picture 
drawn  at  Rugby  of  a  boy  of  his  class,  at  the  moment  when  Dr.  Arnold  was  working  out 
his  great  educational  experiment. 


94  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

books  and  exercises  for  each  form  marked  out ;  the  mode  of  cor- 
rection  described;  the  hours  of  attending  school,  the  vacations 
and  play-days  appointed  ;  and  the  scholars'  amusements  directed 
to  be  confined  to  "driving  a  top,  tossing  a  hand-hall,  running  and 
shooting  ;"  and  for  the  last  mentioned  diversion  all  parents  were 
required  to  furnish  their  children  with  "  bow-strings,  shafts,  and 
braces  to  exercise  shooting."  In  addition  to  scholars  to  be  edu 
cated  freely,  the  schoolmaster  is  to  receive  the  children  of  pari>h- 
ioners  a>  well  as  ''foreigners;"  from  the  latter  "he  may  take 
such  stipends  and  wages  as  he  can  get,  except  that  they  be  of 
the  kindred  of  John  Lyon  the  founder."  The  sum  of  20/.  was 
allotted  for  four  exhibitions — two  in  Gonville  and  Caius  College, 
Cambridge;  the  others  in  any  college  at  Oxford  —  which  schol 
arships  have  been  increased.  The  revenues  of  the  School  estates 
which  Lyon  left  are  now  very  considerable;  so  that  one  portion 
of  the  property,  which  70  years  ago  produced  only  100/.  a-year, 
now  returns  4000/. 

The  school  was  built  about  three  years  after  Lyon's  decease  ;  * 
the  school-room,  fifty  feet  in  length,  has  large,  square,  heavy- 
framed  windows,  mid  is  partly  wainscoted  with  oak,  which  is 
covered  with  the  carved  names  of  many  generations  of  Harro 
vians.  The  plastered  walls  above  the  wainscot  were  formerly- 
filled  with  names  and  dates,  but  they  have  been  obliterated  with 
whitewash.  Boards  have  since  been  put  up  on  which  the  names 
are  neatly  carved,  in  regular  order  and  of  uniform  size. 

Among  those  inscriptions  are  the  names  of  Parr;  Sheridan  (only  the  initials  R.  It.  S  ) : 
W.Jones  (Sir  William);  Bennett  (Bishop  of  Cloyne) ;  Ryder  (Bishop  of  Lirhfield  and 
Coventry);  Murray  (Bishop  of  Rochester):  Dymock  (the  Champion);  Ryder  (  Lord  Ilar- 
rowby) ;'  Temple  (Lord  Palmerston) ;  Lord  Byron  ;  and  Peel  (Sir  Robert) :  between  the  two 
last  letters  of  the  latter  name  is  the  name  of  Percival,  as  cut  by  the  lamented  statesman. 

Above  the  school-room  is  the  Monitors'  Library.  Here  is  a 
portrait  of  Dr.  Parr ;  a  portrait  and  bust  of  Lord  Byron,  and  a 
sword  worn  by  him  when  in  Greece;  and  a  superb  fancy  archery 
dress,  worn  on  the  day  of  shooting  for  the  silver  arrow,  about 
the  year  17G6.  Here,  also,  is  a  quarto  volume  of  **  Speech  Bills." 

*  John  Lyon  is  buried  in  Harrow  Church  :  the  bras*  of  his  tomb  state*,  "  who  hath 
founded  a  free  grammar-school  in  this  parish  to  have  continuance  for  ever ;  and  for  main 
tenance  thereof,  and  for  releyffe  of  the  poore,  and  of  some  poore  schollars  in  the  universi- 
tyes,  repairing  of  highwayes  and  other  good  and  charitable  uses,  hath  made  conveyance  of 
lands  of  good  value  to  a  corporation  granted  for  that  purpose.  Prayse  be  to  the  Author  of 
all  goodness,  who  makes  u»  myndful  to  follow  his  good  example."  Over  the  tomb  is  a 
marble  monument  erected  by  Old  Harrovians  in  1813;  the  Latin  inscription  written  by  Dr. 
Parr  ;  above,  the  sculptor,  Klaxman,  has  represented  a  master  and  three  pupils,  said  to  be 
Dr.  Butler,  the  then  head-master,  and  the  three  Percevals.  the  sons  of  the  Minister. 

In  the  church  also  \a  a  monument  by  Westmacott,  to  Dr.  Drury,  with  a  bass-relief  of  two 
boys  contemplating  the  bust  of  their  master;  the  likenesses  of  the  boys  are  appropriated  to 
Sir  Robert  Peel  and  Lord  Byron.  Here  likewise  is  a  mural  monument  to  Dr.  Summer, 
head-master,  with  a  Latin  inscription  by  Dr.  Parr.  In  the  churchyard  lies  another  head 
master.  Dr.  Thackeray,  who  introduced  the  Eton  s>steni  of  Education  at  Harrow,  which, 
with  few  modifications,  has  continued  in  use  ever  since. 


Progress  of  Education.  95 

Near  the  School  is  the  Speech  Room,  built  by  old  Harrovians : 
the  windows  are  filled  .with  painted  glass,  and  here  is  a  painting 
of  Cicero  pleading  against  Catiline,  painted  by  Gavin  Hamilton. 
There  is  a  Chapel  for  the  accommodation  of  the  scholars  only ; 
to  which  was  added,  in  185G,  a  "Memorial  Chapel,"  in  honor  of 
those  officers  who  fell  in  the  Crimean  war,  who  had  been  edu 
cated  at  Harrow  School.*  The  head-master's  house  is  in  the 
street  of  Harrow,  and  with  the  school  buildings  and  chapel,  is  in 
the  Elizabethan  style.  The  device  of  the  school  is  a  lion,  ram 
pant,  the  armorial  bearings  of  the  founder,  and  a  rebus  of  his 
Maine  (motto,  Stet  Fortuna  Domus),  to  which  have  been  added 
two  crossed  arrows,  denoting  the  ancient  practice  of  archery 
enjoined  by  Lyon ;  and  on  the  Anniversary,  six  or  twelve  boys 
shot  for  a  silver  arrow,  the  competitors  wearing  fancy  dresses  of 
spangled  satin.  The  last  arrow  was  contended  for  in  1771 :  the 
butts  were  set  up  on  a  picturesqued  spot,  "  worthy  of  a  Roman 
amphitheatre,"  at  the  entrance  to  the  village. 

Beyond  the  court-yard  are  courts  for  racket,  a  favorite  game 
at  Harrow.  There  is  likewise  a  cricket-ground,  and  a  bathing- 
place,  formerly  known  as  the  Duck  Puddle." 

The  scholars,  chiefly  the  sons  of  noblemen  and  gentlemen, 
number  about  400. 

Among  the  eminent  Harrovians  are  William  Baxter,  the  antiquary  and  philologist ;  John 
Dennis,  the  poet  and  critic  ;  Bruce,  the  traveler  in  Abyssinia;  Sir  William  Jones,  the  Ori 
ental  scholar  ;  the  Rer.  Dr.  Parr ;  the  heroic  Lord  Rodney  ;  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  ; 
Viscount  Palmerston ;  the  Marquis  Wellesley ;  Mr.  Malthus,  the  political  economist ; 
Spencer  Perceval ;  Earl  Spencer,  who  collected  the  magnificent  library  at  Althorp ;  the 
Earl  of  Aberdeen;  W.  B.  Proctor  (Carry  Cornwall),  the  poet;  Lord  Elgin,  who  collected 
the  "  Marbles  "  from  the  Parthenon  ;  Lord  Chancellor  Cottenham  ;  the  Earl  of  Shaftes- 
bury  ;  and  Lord  Byron  and  Sir  Robert  Peel,  both  born|in  the  same  year,  1788. 

EDUCATION    OF   JAMES    I. 

Prince  James,  only  son  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  by  Henry 
Lord  Darnley,  her  second  husband,  was  born  in  Edinburgh 
Castle,  in  1566;  and  in  consequence  of  the  dethronement  of  his 
mother,  was  proclaimed  King  of  Scotland  by  the  title  of  James 
VI.  in  the  following  year,  principally  through  the  preponderance 
of  the  chiefs  of  the  Presbyterian  party  over  the  Roman  Catholic 
leaders.  The  direction  of  James's  childhood  was  intrusted  to  the 
Earl  of  Mar,  governor  of  Stirling  Castle.  To  imbue  the  mind 
of  the  prince  as  early  and  as  deeply  as  possible  with  the  princi 
ples  which  placed  him  upon  the  throne,  was  naturally  regarded 
as  an  object  of  high  importance ;  it  was  also  considered  that  he 
should  be  early  and  thoroughly  grounded  in  classical  learning; 

*  In  the  Chapel,  the  Church,  and  the  School,  there  is  no  distinction  of  seats  for  the  sons 
of  noblemen.  It  was  for  this  reason  that  Rufus  King,  the  American  Ambassador,  sent  his 
sons  to  Harrow,  as  the  only  school  where  no  distinction  was  shown  to  rank. — Smith's 
Handbook. 


96  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

for  which  purpose  the  celebrated  George  Buchanan  was  appoin 
ted  to  the  office  of  preceptor.  Buchanan  was  sixty  years  older 
than  the  King  of  Scots:  his  faculties  had,  however,  suffered 
nothing  by  age,  for  his  great  work,  the  History  of  Scotland^  was 
the  product  of  a  still  later  period  of  his  life.  But  his  original 
faults  of  temper  appear  to  have  been  aggravated  into  habitual 
moroseness;  ''that  contempt  also  for  the  artificial  distinctions  of 
rank  and  fortune,  so  natural  to  men  conscious  of  having  elevated 
themselves  from  obscurity  by  the  unaided  force  of  native  genius, 
was  in  Buchanan  degenerated  into  a  species  of  republican  cyni 
cism  which  often  impelled  him  to  trample  on  the  pride  of  kings 
with  greater  pride  than  their  own."  It  is  said  that  he  once  took 
upon  him  to  severely  whip  the  young  monarch,  for  disturbing 
him  at  his  studies ;  and  his  general  treatment  of  James  may  be 
collected  from  a  speech  used  by  him  concerning  a  person  in  high 
place  about  him  in  England,  "that  he  ever  trembled  at  his 
approach,  he  minded  him  so  of  his  pedagogue."  The  tutor,  on 
his  part,  confessed  a  failure  when,  being  reproached  for  making 
the  King  a  pedant,  he  replied,  that  it  was  the  best  he  could  make 
of  him.  James,  nevertheless,  under  the  guidance  of  so  able  a 
master,  accumulated  a  mass  of  erudition  which  formed  through 
life  his  pride  and  boast;  but  his  judgment  was  feeble,  and  his 
temperament  cold.  The  most  accomplished  Latin  poet  and 
scholar  of  the  age  was  unable  to  refine  or  elevate  his  taste ;  to 
inspire  him  with  due  respect  for  the  public  will,  or  warm  his 
bosom  with  the  sentiments  of  a  patriot  King;  although  with  the 
latter  view  Buchanan  wrote  for  James,  then  in  his  fourteenth 
year,  a  learned  Latin  dialogue  concerning  the  Constitution  of 
Scotland.  Notwithstanding  Buchanan  addressed  this  to  his  pupil 
as  a  testimony  of  his  affection,  he  must  have  made  himself  rather 
an  object  of  awe  than  of  love ;  or  he  (James)  would  have  pre 
served  so  much  respect  for  one  of  the  first  literary  characters  in 
Europe,  and  the  founder  of  his  own  erudition,  as  neither  to  have 
suffered  him  to  die  in  penury,  nor  to  receive  interment  at  the 
cost  of  the  city  of  Edinburgh,  which  charged  itself  with  this  hon 
orable  burthen. 

During  the  civil  wars  which  agitated  Scotland  under  the  suc 
cessive  regencies  of  the  Earls  of  Murray,  Lenox,  Mar,  and 
Morton,  the  royal  minor  James  remained  tranquil  and  secluded 
in  Stirling  Castle ;  but  in  1577,  the  Earls  of  Athol  and  Argyle 
succeeded  in  depriving  Morton  of  the  regency,  and,  gaining 
access  to  the  young  king,  they  persuaded  him,  then  in  his  twelfth 
year,  to  take  into  his  own  hands  the  administration  of  the  country. 
Morton  shortly  after  repossessed  himself  of  Stirling  Castle, 
and  of  the  custody  of  James's  person  ;  yet  a  parliament  assem- 


Progress  of  Education.  97 

bled  in  1578,  had  the  absurdity  to  confirm  the  king's  premature 
assumption  of  manhood.  Here  the  interest  of  James's  educa 
tional  tutelage  may  be  said  to  cease.  He  had  been  altogether 
carefully  instructed  by  Buchanan  ;  and  he  wrote  several  works, 
both  in  prose  and  poetry,  which,  though  now  censured  as  pedan 
tic,  show  him  to  have  possessed  a  cultivated  mind,  and  a  style 
quite  equal  to  the  generality  of  writers  of  his  time.  He  also 
aspired  to  theological  learning ;  for  before  he  was  twenty  years 
of  age,  he  wrote  a  Latin  commentary  on  the  Apocalypse ;  and 
he  founded  a  seminary  for  champions  in  the  Romish  controversy 
upon  the  site  of  the  present  Chelsea  Hospital.  His  amusements, 
however,  were  of  the  coarsest  description ;  cock-fighting,  bull, 
bear,  and  lion  baiting,  and  the  more  ordinary  field  sports,  occupy 
ing  his  time  to  the  utter  neglect  of  public  affairs.  But,  he  was 
a  patron  of  learning ;  and  it  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
authorized  translation  of  the  Bible  was  commenced  and  com 
pleted  under  his  auspices.  Shortly  after  he  had  succeeded  to 
the  English  throne,  at  a  conference  of  divines  held  at  Hampton 
Court,  in  1603,  James  expressed  a  strong  opinion  on  the  imper 
fections  of  the  existing  translations  of  the  Scriptures.  "  I  wish," 
said  he,  "  some  special  pains  were  taken  for  a  uniform  transla 
tion,  which  should  be  done  by  the  best  learned  in  both  universi 
ties,  then  revised  by  the  bishops,  presented  to  the  privy  council, 
and  lastly  ratified  by  royal  authority,  to  be  read  in  the  whole 
church,  and  no  other."  Out  of  this  speech  of  the  king's  arose 
the  present  English  Bible,  which  has  now  for  nearly  250  years 
been  the  only  Bible  read  in  the  English  church,  and  is  also  the 
Bible  universally  used  in  dissenting  communities. 

EDUCATION    OF   PRINCE    HENRY. 

James  I.  married,  in  1590,  Anne  of  Denmark,  by  whom  he 
had  a  family  of  seven  children.  Prince  Henry  Frederic,  the 
eldest  son,  wras  born  at  Stirling  Castle  in  1594.  His  father  com 
mitted  his  infancy  to  the  joint  care  of  the  Earl  of  Mar  and  the 
Countess  his  mother,  who  had  been  the  king's  own  nurse :  both 
were  persons  of  merit,  and  were  loved  by  their  young  charge, 
although  the  countess  is  said  to  have  been  far  from  over-indulgent. 
Neither  James  nor  his  queen  desired  that  their  children  should 
receive  education  under  their  own  eyes,  or  be  domesticated 
beneath  the  same  roof  with  themselves.  In  consequence,  the 
younger  children  were  boarded  out  in  the  families  of  different 
noblemen ;  whilst  for  the  heir-apparent  a  separate  establishment 
was  formed,  almost  immediately  on  his  quitting  his  nurse.  His 
principal  attendants  were  the  Earl  of  Mar  as  governor,  and  Sir 
David  Murray  as  gentleman  of  the  bedchamber.  At  five  or  six 
7 


98  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

y< -ars  of  age,  the  prince  was  placed  under  the  tuition  of  Adam 
Newton,  a  good  scholar,  who  afterward  translated  into  Latin 
the  King's  discourse  against  Vorstius.  About  the  same  time 
James  composed  his  JJasih'con  Doron,  a  collection  of  precepts 
and  maxims  in  religion,  in  morals,  and  in  the  arts  of  government, 
addressed  to  Prince  Henry,  nominally  for  his  instruction,  but 
more  truly  for  displaying  James's  skill  in  common-places,  and 
uttering  to  the  world  his  maxims  of  state.  Upon  the  little  prince 
arriving  in  England,  the  king  created  him  a  Knight  of  the  Garter, 
at  nine  years  of  age,  and  settled  him  in  one  of  the  royal  palaces, 
his  household  consisting  of  seventy  servants,  which  the  King 
doubled  next  year;  and  in  1G10,  the  establishment  of  the  prince 
had  increased  to  426  persons,  besides  artificers  under  the  man 
agement  of  Inigo  Jones,  comptroller  of  the  works.* 

Different  factions  now  strove  to  gain  the  ear  and  heart  of  the 
young  prince.  A  Scotch  officer  being  directed  to  procure  for  his 
highness  a  suit  of  armor,  expressed  his  hopes  that  he  would  fol 
low  the  footsteps  of  Edward  the  Black  Prince,  and  added,  "I 
shall  bring  with  me  also  the  book  of  Froissart,  who  will  show 
your  grace  how  the  wars  were  led  in  those  days;  and  what  just 
title  and  right  your  grace's  father  has  beyond  the  seas."  The 
queen  told  him  she  hoped  one  day  to  see  him  conquer  France, 
like  another  Henry  V.  To  learning  the  prince  does  not  appear 
to  have  been  greatly  inclined,  but  he  remained  true  to  the  Prot 
estant  faith ;  and  the  martial  spirit  thus  fostered  in  him  had  the 
effect  of  rendering  him  a  warm  admirer  of  Henry  IV.  of  France, 
and  by  degrees  of  drawing  him  strongly  within  the  influence  of 
this  distinguished  prince  and  warrior. 

"  None  of  his  pleasures,"  writes  M.  Broderie,  in  1G06,  "  savour  in  the  least  of  a  child. 
He  is  a  particular  lover  of  horses,  and  what  belongs  to  them  ;  but  is  not  fond  of  hunting. 
He  is  fond  of  playing  at  tennis,  and  at  another  Scotch  diversion  very  like  mall ;  but  always 
with  persons  elder  than  himself,  as  if  he  despised  those  of  his  own  age.  He  studies  two 
hours  in  the  day,  and  employs  the  rest  of  his  time  in  tossing  the  pike,  or  leaping,  or 
Bhooting  with  the  bow,  or  throwing  the  bar,  or  vaulting,  or  some  other  exercise  of  that 
kind  ;  and  he  is  never  idle."— Eirck-s  Life. 


*  No.  17,  Fleet-street,  is  a  reputed  residence  of  Prince  Henry,  but  not  mentioned  as  such 
by  his  biographers.  The  first-floor  front-room  has,  however,  an  enriched  plaster  ceiling, 
inscribed  P.  (triple  plume)  II.,  which,  with  part  of  the  carved  wainscoting,  denote  the 
house  to  be  of  the  time  of  James  I.  Here  Mrs.  Salmon  exhibited  her  wax-work,  and  fhe  was, 
probably,  the  first  who  styled  the  place  "once  the  Palace  of  Henry  Prince  of  Wales,  son 
of  King  James  I.;"  a  statement,  perhaps,  as  authentic,  as  the  present  inscription  on  the 
house  —  "Formerly  the  Palace  of  Henry  VIII.  and  Cardinal  Wolsey."  The  size  of  the 
dwelling  does  not  correspond  with  the  magnificent  household  of  Prince  Henry ;  it  is  more 
probable  that  the  ceiling  was  decorated  with  the  royal  plume  and  initials  by  one  of  the 
Prince's  retainers,  which  courtly  compliment  was  formerly  not  rare. 

Ni-ar  I^eicester-fields,  upon  the  site  of  Gerrard-street,  Soho,  was  formerly  a  piece  of 
ground  walled  in  by  Prince  Henry,  for  the  exercise  of  arms ;  here  were  an  armory  and 
a  well-furnished  library  of  books  relating  to  feats  of  arms,  chivalry,  military  affairs, 
encamping,  fortification,  in  all  languages,  and  kept  by  a  learned  librarian.  It  was  called 
the  Artillery  Ground ;  and  after  the  Restoration  of  Charles  II.  it  waa  bought  by  Lord 
Gerard,  and  let  for  building,  about  1677. —  Curiosities  of  London. 


Progress  of  Education.  99 

Henry  patronized  that  excellent  man  and  preacher,  Joseph 
Hall,  afterward  Bishop  of  Norwich.  Having  heard  two  of  the 
sermons,  the  prince,  then  in  his  fourteenth  year,  appointed  him 
one  of  his  chaplains.  Henry  was  early  impressed  with  a  strong 
sense  of  religion ;  and  besides  exhibiting  strict  religious  obser 
vance  in  his  own  conduct,  his  youthful  zeal  ordered  boxes  to  be 
kept  at  his  three  houses,  to  receive  the  penalties  on  profane 
swearing,  which  he  commanded  to  be  strictly  levied  on  his  house 
hold  ;  and  he  is  stated  to  have  once  declared  that  "  all  the  plea 
sure  in  the  world  is  not  worth  an  oath."  He  took  early  interest 
in  naval  matters  ;  frequently  visited  the  dockyards  ;  took  great 
delight  in  a  model  ship  which  was  constructed  for  him,  and 
received  Phineas  Pett,  the  builder,  into  his  special  favor  and 
protection.  He  greatly  admired  the  genius  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  and  more  than  once  exclaimed  that  "  no  king  but  his 
father  would  keep  such  a  bird  in  a  cage."  Henry  died  in  his 
nineteenth  year :  the  grief  of  the  people  was  unbounded :  the 
young  and  adventurous  bewailed  a  prince  supposed  to  resemble 
Henry  V.,  that  favorite  of  English  story,  equally  in  his  outward 
form  and  in  the  nobler  qualities  of  his  mind ;  and  the  zealous 
party  in  religion  mourned  a  stanch  defender  of  the  Protestant 
church.  The  two  universities  produced  sermons,  Latin  orations, 
and  collections  of  verses,  in  honor  of  the  lamented  Prince  Henry. 
Most  of  the  cotemporary  poets,  with  the  very  remarkable  excep 
tion  of  Ben  Jonson — the  court  poet,  though  not  yet  the  laure 
ate —  hastened  to  scatter  their  voluntary  offerings  round  the 
tomb  of  Henry.  Chapman,  the  translator  of  Homer,  bewailed  in 
the  prince  his  "  most  dear  and  heroical  patron."  Webster  and 
Heywood  each  produced  an  elegy.  William  Browne,  who  pub 
lished  in  the  folio-wing  year  Britannia's  Pastorals,  first  exercised 
his  muse  on  the  loss  of  Henry ;  and  Dr.  Donne,  known  chiefly 
by  his  satires,  in  a  tender  elegy  commemorated  the  virtue  of  this 
lamented  prince.  His  handsome  person  and  knightly  figure  are 
vividly  portrayed  in  the  print  engraved  by  Crispin  Pass. 

LITERATURE    OF    THE    REIGN    OF   JAMES    THE   FIRST. 

The  best  learning  of  this  age  was  derived  from  the  study  of 
the  ancients ;  which,  however,  tended  to  introduce  the  pedantry 
and  forced  conceits  and  sentiments  so  prevalent  in  the  writing  of 
the  time.  The  English  language,  after  having  been  improved  by 
Spenser  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  rendered  almost  perfect  by 
Richard  Hooker,  in  his  immortal  books  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Polity,  had  begun,  after  the  middle  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  to 
lose  some  of  its  native  vigor,  being  molded  by  every  writer  ac 
cording  to  his  own  fancy.  The  introduction  of  the  Latin  idiom, 


100  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

which  had  caused  many  innovations  in  tin;  last  reign,  greatly  in 
creased  under  James  I.,  who  was  himself  infected  with  the  bad 
tastt-  of  his  time.  The  prose  composition  lias  been  considered  to 
be  more  imperfect  than  the  verse  ;  the  purest  language  spoken  in 
the  Courts  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I.  is  thought  to  have  differed 
but  little  from  the  best  of  modern  times;  wherefore  the  unpolished 
and  Latinized  prose  of  the  seventeenth  century  has  lieen  attrib 
uted  to  the  station  in  society  of  the  authors.  But  the  English 
tongue  could  boast  of  Shakspeare,  Ben  Jonson,  and  Edward 
Fairfax,  the  translator  of  Tasso ;  Sir  John  Harrington,  who 
rendered  Ariosto  into  British  verse ;  Dr.  Donne,  whose  wit  and 
deep  feeling,  thrown  into  his  lines,  are  almost  entirely  obscured 
by  an  uncommonly  harsh  and  uncouth  expression;  Dr.  Joseph 
Hall,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  the  first  author  of  satires  in  English; 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh ;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  Owen  Feltham 
and  Lord  Bacon.  The  last  was  one  of  the  greatest  glories  of 
the  literature  of  this  period.  lie  wrote  more  in  Latin  than  in 
English,  and  perhaps  had  more  strength  than  elegance  in  either  ; 
but  he  is  rendered  famous  by  the  great  variety  of  his  talents  as 
a  public  speaker,  a  statesman,  a  wit,  a  courtier,  an  author,  a  phi 
losopher,  and  a  companion. 

In  this  reign,  in  1G08,  the  great  Lord  Clarendon,  Chancellor 
to  Charles  II.,  was  born  at  Dinton,  near  Salisbury,  where  he 
was  first  instructed  by  the  clergyman  of  the  parish,  who  was  also 
a  schoolmaster,  and  afterward  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  entered  at  the  age  of  thirteen :  we  obtain  a  glimpse  of 
the  manners  of  the  students  at  the  University  at  that  period  from 
Clarendon's  quitting  Oxford  "  in  consequence  of  the  habit  of 
hard  drinking  which  then  prevailed  there." 

In  the  same  year,  1G08,  was  born  John  Milton;  and  in  1012, 
Samuel  Butler ;  of  whose  school-days  some  account  will  be  given 
in  a  future  page. 

BURTON    AND    SELDEN. 

To  the  scholars  of  this  period  belongs  Robert  Burton,  who 
wrote  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  the  favorite  of  the  learned 
and  witty,  and  beyond  all  other  English  authors,  largely  dealing 
in  apt  and  original  quotations.  Burton  was  born  at  Lindley,  in 
Leicestershire,  in  1570,  and  was  sent  early  to  the  free  grammar- 
school  of  Sutton  Coldfield,  in  Warwickshire,  as  he  mentions  in 
his  Anatomy — in  his  will,  he  also  states  Nuneaton  ;  probably  he 
may  have  been  at  both  schools.  At  the  age  of  17,  he  was  ad 
mitted  a  commoner  at  Brazen  Nose  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
made  considerable  progress  in  logic  and  philosophy  ;  in  1599,  he 
was  elected  student  of  Christchurch  ;  and  about  1028,  he  be 
came  rector  of  Segrave,  Wood  describes  him  as  — 


Progress  of  Education.  101 

"  an  exact  mathematician,  a  curious  calculator  of  nativities,  a  general-read  scholar,  a  thor 
ough-paced  philologist,  and  one  that  understood  the  surveying  of  lands  well.  As  he  was 
by  many  accounted  a  severe  student,  a  devourer  of  authors,  a  melancholy  and  humorous 
person,  so  by  others  who  knew  him  well,  a  person  of  great  honesty,  plain  dealing,  and 
charity.  I  have  heard  some  of  the  antients  of  Christchurch  often  say  that  his  memory 
was  very  merry,  facete,  and  juvenile  ;  and  no  man  in  his  time  did  surpass  him  for  his  ready 
and  dexterous  interlarding  his  common  discourses  among  them  with  verses  from  the  poets, 
or  sentences  from  classical  authors  ;  which,  being  then  all  the  fashion  in  the  University, 
made  his  company  more  acceptable." 

"We  gather  from  Burton's  account  of  himself,  that  he  aimed  at 
a  smattering  in  all ;  that  he  had  read  many  good  books,  but  to 
little  purpose,  for  want  of  a  good  method ;  that  all  his  treasure 
was  in  Minerva's  tower ;  that  he  lived  a  collegiate  student,  as 
Democritus  in  his  garden,  and  led  a  monastic  life,  sequestered 
from  the  tumults  and  troubles  of  the  world,  but  now  and  then 
walking  abroad,  to  see  the  fashions,  and  look  into  the  world.  He 
was  an  inordinate  reader,  and  was  liberally  supplied  with  books 
from  the  Bodleian  Library,  to  which  and  Christchurch  Library 
he  bequeathed  his  own  books. 

John  Selden,  described  as  "  an  English  gentleman  of  most 
extensive  knowledge  and  prodigious  learning,"  was  born  at  Sal- 
vington,  in  Sussex,  in  1584:  he  was  sent  early  to  the  prebendal 
free  school  at  Chichester,  which  had  been  refounded  by  Bishop 
Edward  Story,  about  1470;  but  the  school  is  believed  to  be 
coeval  with  the  cathedral.  From  Chichester,  Selden  was  sent  to 
Oxford.  Antony  a  Wood  says  :  "  he  was  an  exact  critic  and 
philologist,  an  excellent  Grecian,  Latinist,  and  historian,  and, 
above  all,  a  profound  antiquary." 

By  his  works  Selden  acquired  the  esteem  and  friendship  of 
Camden,  Spelman,  Sir  Robert  Cotton,  Ben  Jonson,  Browne,  and 
also  of  Drayton,  to  whose  Polyolbion  he  furnished  notes.  By 
Milton  he  is  spoken  of  as  "  the  chief  of  learned  men  reputed  in 
this  land."  "  He  was  of  so  stupendous  a  learning,"  says  Lord 
Clarendon,  "  in  all  kinds  and  in  all  languages  (as  may  appear  in 
his  excellent  writings),  that  a  man  would  have  thought  he  had 
been  entirely  conversant  among  books,  and  had  never  spent  an 
hour  but  in  reading  and  writing ;  yet  his  humanity,  affability, 
and  courtesy  were  such,  that  he  would  have  been  thought  to 
have  been  bred  in  the  best  courts,  but  that  his  good  nature,  char 
ity,  and  delight  in  doing  good  exceeded  that  breeding."  His 
amanuensis  for  twenty  years  enjoyed  the  opportunity  of  hearing 
his  employer's  discourse,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  faithfully  com 
mitting  '"the  excellent  things  that  usually  fell  from  him;"  which 
were  subsequently  published  as  Selden's  Table  Talk. 

THOMAS  FULLER'S  "SCHOOLMASTER." 

The  witty  Thomas  Fuller,  one  of  the  most  original  writers  in 
our  language,' was  born  in  1608,  at  Aldwinckle,  in  Northampton- 


102  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

shire  ;  his  father  being  rector  of  St.  Peter's,  in  that  village.  His 
early  education  was  conducted  chiefly  under  the  paternal  roof, 
and  so  successfully,  that  at  twelve  years  of  age  he  was  sent  to 
Queen's  College,  Cambridge.  At  the  age  of  sixteen  he  took  his 
degree  of  B.A.,  and  that  of  M.A.  in  1G28.*  He  soon  became 
an  extremely  popular  pivarh<T,  and  preferment  came  rapidly. 
Among  his  numerous  works,  Fuller  has  portrayed  "  The  Good 
Schoolmaster,"  of  whose  office  he  says :  "  There  is  scarce  any 
profession  in  the  commonwealth  more  necessary,  which  is  so 
slightly  performed.  The  reasons  whereof  I  conceive  to  be  these : 
First,  young  scholars  make  this  calling  their  refuge ;  yea,  per 
chance,  before  they  have  taken  any  degree  in  the  University, 
commence  schoolmasters  in  the  country ;  as  if  nothing  else  were 
required  to  set  up  this  profession,  but  only  a  rod  and  a  ferula. 
Secondly,  others,  who  are  able,  use  it  only  as  a  passage  to  better 
preferment ;  to  patch  the  rents  in  their  present  fortune,  till  they 
can  provide  a  new  ona,  and  betake  themselves  to  some  more 
gainful  calling.  Thirdly,  they  are  disheartened  from  doing  their 
best,  with  the  miserable  reward  which  in  some  places  they  re 
ceive,  being  masters  to  the  children,  and  slaves  to  their  parents. 
Fourthly,  being  grown  rich,  they  grow  negligent ;  and  scorn  to 
touch  the  school,  but  by  the  proxy  of  an  usher. 

"  Some  men  had  as  lieve  be  school-boys  as  school-masters  —  to 
be  tied  to  the  school,  as  Cooper's  Dictionary  and  Scapula's  Lex 
icon  are  chained  to  the  desk  therein ;  and  though  great  scholars, 
and  skillful  in  other  arts,  are  bunglers  in  this. 

"  But  a  good  schoolmaster  studieth  his  scholars'  natures  as  care 
fully  as  they  their  books,  and  ranks  their  dispositions  into  several 
forms.  He  refuseth  cockering  mothers  who  proffer  him  money 
to  purchase  their  sons'  exemption  from  his  rod,  and  scorns  the 
late  custom  in  some  places  of  commuting  whipping  into  money, 
and  ransoming  boys  from  the  rod  at  a  set  price."  These  are  in 
teresting  glimpses  of  schoolmasters'  practice  and  the  state  of 
common  education  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

THE  CHARTER-HOUSE  SCHOOL  FOUNDED. 

In  one  of  the  secluded  corners  of  the  City  of  London,  and 

*  Fuller's  power  of  memory  was  very  great.  It  is  said  that  he  could  "  repeat  five  hun 
dred  strange  words  after  once  hearing  them,  and  could  make  use  of  a  sermon  verbatim, 
under  the  like  circumstances."  Still  further,  it  is  said  that  he  undertook,  in  passing  from 
Temple  Kar  to  the  extremity  of  C.'beapside,  to  tell,  at  his  return,  every  sign  as  it  stood  in 
order  on  both  sides  of  the  way  ([repeating  them  either  backward  or  forward),  and  that  he 
performed  the  task  exactly.  This  is  pretty  well,  considering  that  in  that  day  every  shop 
had  its  Mgn.  Of  his  method  of  composition,  it  is  said  that  he  was  in  u  the  habit  of  writing 
the  first  words  of  every  line  near  the  margin  down  to  the  foot  of  the  paper,  and,  that  then 
beginning  .again,  he  filled  up  the  vacuities  exactly,  without  spaces,  interlineations,  or  con 
tractions  ;  and  that  he  "would  so  connect  the  ends  and  beginnings  that  the  sense  would 
appear  as  complete  as  if  it  had  been  written  in  a  continued  series,  after  the  ordinary 
manner." 


Progress  of  Education.  103 

not  far  from  Smithfield,  which  was  once  the  Town  Green,  was 
founded  by  the  chivalrous  Sir  Walter  Manny,  in  the  14th  cen 
tury,  a  monastery  of  Carthusians,  in  which  the  founder  was 
buried  the  year  after  its  completion.  Here  Sir  Thomas  More 
gave  himself  to  devotion  and  prayer  for  about  four  years.  The 
monastery,  after  the  surrender,  had  several  noble  owners ;  and 
in  1611  was  sold  to  Thomas  Sutton,  the  wealthy  merchant,  who 
endowed  it  as  "  the  Hospital  of  King  James  ;  though  it  is  now 
known  as  the  Charter-house,  corrupted  from  Chartreux,  the 
place  where  the  order  of  Carthusians  was  originally  instituted. 
Sutton  designed  the  foundation  as  a  collegiate  asylum  for  the 
aged;  a  school-house  for  the  young;  and  a  chapel;  but  he  died 
before  he  had  perfected  his  good  work,  "  the  greatest  gift  in  Eng 
land,  either  in  protestant  or  catholic  times,  ever  bestowed  by  any 
individual."  The  foundation  was,  however,  soon  after  completed. 
Few  portions  of  the  monastery  buildings  remain  ;  but  the  wooden 
gates  are  those  over  which  the  mangled  body  of  the  last  prior 
was  placed  by  the  spoilers  at  the  Dissolution. 

Upon  the  foundation  are  maintained  80  pensioners,  or  poor 
brethren,  who  "  live  together  in  collegiate  style,"  and  are  nomi 
nated  in  the  same  manner  as  the  40  foundation  scholars,  "  Gown 
Boys,"  by  the  Governors,  who  present  in  rotation.  The  founda 
tion  scholars  receive  their  board,  education,  and  clothing  free  of 
expense,  and  enjoy  the  right  of  election  to  an  unlimited  number 
of  exhibitions,  of  from  80/.  to  1001.  a-year,  at  either  university. 
Others  receive  donations  toward  placing  them  out  in  life.  The 
foundation  scholars  also  enjoy  the  preference  over  the  Scholars 
of  presentation  to  valuable  church  preferment  in  the  gift  of  the 
Governors.  The  number  of  scholars  is  about  180. 

For  the  establishment  of  a  school  for  forty  boys,  the  sum  of  5000Z.  was  bequeathed  ex 
pressly  ;  and  a  sum  of  40?.  was  limited  to  be  paid  with  every  boy,  either  to  advance  him  in 
college,  or  as  an  apprentice  fee  in  trade.  It  is  rather  significant  of  the  inadequacy  of  that 
sum  for  the  purpose,  and  of  the  greatly  reduced  value  of  money,  that  we  find  the  exhibi 
tions  to  college  enlarged  by  the  governors  to  more  than  40?.  a-year  for  four  years  ;  and  also 
that  the  amount  of  40J.  as  an  apprentice  premium  was  wholly  useless  and  insufficient ;  so 
much  so,  that  those  premiums  have  been  discontinued,  no  youth  having  been  apprenticed 
from  the  school  since  John  P.  Kemble  was  bound  apprentice  to  his  uncle,  the  comedian, 
to  learn  the  histrionic  art!  In  truth,  the  40?.  in  1611,  as  compared  to  the  same  nominal 
amount  of  our  currency,  may  be  estimated  at  400J.,  or  ten  times  the  sum.  This  calculation 
ought  to  be  borne  out  in  all  the  details,  for  most  assuredly  the  value  of  the  estates  has  in 
creased  tenfold;  and  yet  the  gross  rental,  which  was,  in  the  year  1691,  5391J.,  averaged  for 
the  last  six  years  less  than  21,000?.,  representing  an  increase  little  exceeding  three  times 
that  amount !— The  Builder,  No.  631. 

The  Great  Hall,  built  about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  cen 
tury,  has  for  its  west  wall  part  of  the  conventual  edifice.  It 
has  a  screen,  music  gallery,  sculptured  chimney-piece,  and  lan 
tern  in  the  roof;  and  here  hangs  a  noble  portrait  of  the  founder, 
Sutton.  In  this  apartment  is  celebrated  the  anniversary  of  the 


104  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

foundation,  on    December  12;    when  is  always  sung   the   old 
Carthusian  melody,  with  this  chorus: 

"  Then  blessed  be  the  memory 

Of  good  old  Thomas  Su't .»  ; 
Who  gave  us  lodging  —  learning. 
And  he  gave  us  beef  and  mutton." 

The  present  school-house  is  a  modern  brick  building  (1803)  ; 
the  large  central  door  is  surrounded  by  stones  bearing  the  names 
of  former  Carthusians.  There  are  two  play-greens,  —  for  the 
'•  Uppers "  and  "  Unders ;"  and  by  the  wall  of  the  ancient 
monastery  is  a  gravel  walk  upon  the  site  of  a  range  of  cloisters. 
The  Master  has  his  flower-garden,  with  its  fountain  ;  there  an- 
courts  for  tennis,  a  favorite  game  among  Carthusians  ;  a  "  wilder 
ness  "  of  fine  trees,  intersected  by  grass  and  gravel  walks ;  the 
cloisters,  where  football  and  hookey  are  played ;  the  old  school, 
its  ceiling  charged  with  armorial  shields ;  the  great  kitchen,  prob 
ably  the  banqueting-hall  of  the  old  priory ;  the  chapel  where 
Sutton  lies,  beneath  a  sumptuous  tomb ;  and  lastly,  the  burial- 
ground  for  the  poor  brethren.  There  are  besides  solitary  courts, 
remains  of  cloisters  and  cells,  and  old  doorways  and  window- 
cases,  which  assert  the  antiquity  of  the  place  ;  and  the  governors 
have  wisely  extended  the  great  object  of  the  founder  by  the 
grant  of  a  piece  of  ground,  where  a  church  and  schools  for  the 
poorer  classes  have  been  built. 

Among  the  eminent  Schoolmasters  of  Charter-house  is  the  Rev.  Andrew  Tooke,  author 
of  "  The  Pantheon."  Among  the  eminent  Scholars  :  Kichard  Crashaw,  the  poet,  author 
of  "  Steps  to  the  Temple  ;"  Isaac  Barrow,  the  divine  —  he  was  celebrated  at  school  for  his 
love  of  fighting ;  Sir  \Villiam  Blackstone,  author  of  the  Commentaries;  Joseph  Addison 
and  Richard  Stcele,  scholars  at  the  same  time;  John  Wesley,  the  founder  of  the  \Vesley- 
ans  ;*  Lord  Chief-Justice  Ellenborough ;  Lord  Liverpool,  the  Prime  Minister ;  Bishop 
Monk  ;  W.  M.  Thackeray  ;  Sir  C.  L.  Eastlake,  P.R.A.  The  two  eminent  historians  of  Greece, 
Bishop  Thirlwall  and  George  Grote,  Esq..  were  both  together,  in  the  same  form,  under  Dr. 
Ilaine. — Abridged  from  Cunningham^s  Handbook  of  London. 

To  the  list  will  surely  be  added  "  Old  Phlos.:i  The  pet  name  will  be  remembered  by 
Carthusians,  whose  memories  can  go  back  some  forty  years  or  more.  They  will  not  have 
forgotten  the  gentle  and  thoughtful  lad  who  used  to  stand  looking  on  while  others  played, 
and  whose  general  meditative  manner  procured  for  him  the  name  of  "  Philosopher,"  sub 
sequently  diminished  to  "  Phlos,"  and  occasionally  applied  as  "Old  Phlos."  That  young 
and  popular  philosopher  is  the  soldier  at  whose  name  the  hearts  of  Englishmen  beat  with 
honest  pride.  "Old  Phlos  ;J  of  the  Charter-house  is  Havelock,  the  hero  of  Cawupore.— 
AthenfPiim. 

Among  the  Poor  Brethren:  Elkanah  Settle,  the  rival  and  antagonist  of  Dryden :  John 
Bagford,  the  antiquary,  who  left  a  large  collection  of  materials  for  the  history  of  Printing  ; 
Isaac  de  Groot.  by  several  descents  the  nephew  of  Hugo  Grotius  —  he  was  admitted  at  the 
earnest  intercession  of  Dr.  Johnson;  aud  Alexander  Maclean,  Johnson's  assistant  in  his 
Dictionary. 

EDUCATION    OF    CHARLES    I. 

Little  is  recorded  of  the  early  life  of  this  ill-fated  prince. 
He  was  the  second  son  of  James  VI.  of  Scotland,  by  Anne  of 
Denmark,  his  queen,  and  was  born  at  the  royal  castle  of  Dun- 

*  Wesley  imputed  his  after-health  and  long  life  to  the  strict  obedience  with  which  he  per 
formed  an  injunction  of  his  father's,  that  he  should  run  round  the  Charter-house  playiug- 
green  three  times  every  morning. 


Progress  of  Education.  105 

fermline,  in  Scotland,  in  1600.  At  three  years  of  age  he  was 
committed  to  the  care  of  the  lady  of  Sir  George  Gary,  and  under 
her  management  the  weakly  constitution  of  the  young  prince 
improved ;  it  became  firm  and  vigorous  when  he  had  attained  to 
manhood,  and  he  is  said  to  have  shown  great  activity  in  his  field 
sports  and  exercises  ;  his  stature,  however,  remained  below  the 
middle  size,  and  the  deformity  of  his  childhood  was  never  entirely 
corrected.*  Another  natural  defect  under  which  he  labored  was 
an  impediment  in  utterance,  which  through  life  generally  mani 
fested  itself  whenever  Charles  became  earnest  in  discourse,  and 
which  had,  doubtless,  a  great  share  in  producing  the  taciturnity 
for  which  he  was  remarkable.  On  completing  his  fourth  year, 
Charles  was  brought  to  England;  on  Twelfth  Day,  1605,  he 
was  created  a  Knight  of  the  Bath,  with  twelve  companions, 
and  afterward  solemnly  invested  with  the  dignity  of  Duke 
of  York. 

Miss  Aikin  searched  in  vain  among  cotemporary  letters  and 
memoirs  for  early  anecdotes  of  this  prince.  His  habits  were 
sedentary  and  studious,  and  were  much  ridiculed  by  his  elder 
brother  Henry,  whose  death  rendered  Charles  heir-apparent  to 
the  British  crown ;  but  he  appears  still  to  have  lived  in  seclu 
sion.  An  encomiastic  biographer  attributes  his  supposed  obsti 
nacy  and  suspected  perverseness  to  the  above  natural  defects. 
An  old  Scottish  lady,  his  nurse,  used  to  affirm  that  he  was  of  a 
very  evil  nature  in  his  infancy,  and  the  lady  who  afterward  took 
charge  of  him  stated  that  he  was  "beyond  measure  willful  and 
unthankful."  These  faults  of  temper  were,  however,  checked  as 
Charles  grew  up.  His  reserve  saved  him  from  excesses:  he  was 
moderate  in  his  expenses,  prudent  in  his  conduct,  and  regular  at 
his  devotions ;  he  was  industrious,  and  his  pursuits  and  tastes 
were  of  an  elegant  turn.  King  James  sought  to  inspire  his  son 
with  his  own  love  of  learning.  At  the  premature  age  of  ten, 
Charles  was  made  to  go  through  the  form  of  holding  a  public 
disputation  in  theology,  and  he  actually  became  acquainted  with 
the  polemics  of  the  time.  His  own  inclinations,  however,  led 
him  to  the  study  of  mechanics  and  the  fine  arts.  An  attached 
adherent  has  thus  described  the  young  prince's  accomplish 
ments  : 

With  any  artist  or  good  mechanic,  traveler,  or  scholar,  he  would  discourse  freely ;  and 
as  he  -was  commonly  improved  by  them,  so  he  often  gave  light  to  them  in  their  own  art  or 
knowledge.  For  there  were  few  gentlemen  in  the  world  that  knew  more  of  useful  or  nec 
essary  learning  than  this  prince  did  ;  and  yet  his  proportion  of  books  was  but  small,  hav 
ing,  like  Francis  the  First  of  France,  learned  more  by  the  ear  than  by  study His 

exertions  were  manly  ;  for  he  rid  the  great  horse  very  well ;  and  on.  the  little  saddle  he  was 

*  In  the  fine  equestrian  portrait  of  Charles  I.,  by  Vandyke,  now  at  Hampton  Court,  a 
curvature  at  the  knee  is  distinctly  visible. 


106  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

not  only  adroit,  but  a  laborious  hunter  or  fieldsman,  and  they  were  wont  to  Fay  of  him,  that 
he  never  failed  to  do  any  of  his  exercises  artificially,  but  not  Tory  grace-fully. 

A  collection  of  antiques  (says  Miss  Aikin),  and  other  objects 
of  curiosity  bequeathed  to  him  by  Prince  Henry,  appears  first 
to  have  directed  his  attention  toward  painting  and  sculpture ; 
the  taste  was  afterward  fostered  in  him  by  the  Duke  of  Buck 
ingham,  and  his  merits  as  a  connoisseur  and  patron  of  art  and 
artists  were  unquestionably  great.  • 

At  the  age  of  sixteen,  Charles  was  solemnly  created  Prince  of 
Wales ;  and  his  household  was  formed,  almost  all  the  officers 
being  Scotch.  Mr.  Murray,  his  tutor,  who  had  been  about  him 
from  his  sixth  year,  was  also  a  Scotsman  and  a  Presbyterian. 
These  circumstances  led  to  many  fears  and  jealousies,  and  being 
represented  to  the  king,  he  appointed  Dr.  Hakewill,  an  eminent 
divine,  of  Oxford,  as  Charles's  religious  instructor ;  who,  endeav 
oring  to  dissuade  the  prince  from  his  marriage  with  the  Spanish 
Infanta,  a  Catholic  princess,  was  imprisoned,  deprived  of  his 
office  about  Charles,  and  for  ever  debarred  of  further  preferment ; 
but  the  provostship  of  Eton  was  afterward  conferred  upon  him 
in  recompense  for  his  long  service. 

The  prince's  "exercises  of  religion  were  most  exemplary  :  for  every  morning  early,  and 
evening  not  very  late,  singly  and  alone,  he  spent  some  time  in  private  meditation,  and  he 
never  failed,  before  he  sat  down  to  dinner,  to  have  part  of  the  liturgy  read  to  him  and  his 
servants ;  and  when  any  young  nobleman  or  gentleman  who  was  going  to  travel,  came  to 
kiss  his  hand,  he  cheerfully  would  give  him  somo  good  counsel  leading  to  moral  virtue, 
especially  a  good  conversation." 

Charles  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  elegant  and  forcible 
English  writers  of  his  time,  and  a  great  friend  to  the  fine  arts ; 
and  to  him  we  owe  the  first  formation  of  the  royal  collection  of 
pictures  now  in  the  palaces.  Charles's  works  consist  chiefly  of 
letters,  and  a  few  state  papers,  and  of  the  famous  Eikon  Basililte, 
which  first  appeared  immediately  after  the  death  of  the  king:* 
his  claim  to  the  authorship  was  much  disputed ;  but  Dr.  Ch. 
Wordsworth,  in  an  octavo  volume  of  patient  research,  is  con 
sidered  to  have  proved  the  book  to  have  been  the  production  of 
Charles  ;  Dr.  Wordsworth  states  that  Hooker,  the  divine  Herbert, 
and  Spenser  were  the  king's  favorite  reading ;  and,  "  the  closet 
companion  of  his  solitudes,  William  Shakspeare." 

LITERATURE  AND  LEARNING  AT  THE  ACCESSION  OF  CHARLES  I. 

At  the  period  of  Charles's  accession,  the  cumbrous  erudition 

*  A  curious  piece  of  evidence  of  the  publication  of  this  work  is  recorded  in  an  Historical 
Account  of  Mr.  John  Tolaud,  1722,  who,  at  an  auction  of  books  at  Button's  Coffee-house, 
in  Kussell-strect,  Covcnt  Garden,  bought  Mr.  Tolaml's  Amyntor ;  or,  A  Defence  of  Milton's 
Lift,  in  page  120  whereof  was  written  by  one  Dr.  Thompson  the  following  memorandum  ; 
''Mr.  John  Wilson,  barrister-at  law,  author  of  the  Vindication  of  Icon  Iftutfufc*,  apiin>t 
Milton,  told  me  in  person  that  he  bought  the  Icon  Banilike,  Jan.  31, 1648,  for  ten  shilling.-i, 
the  very  next  day  after  the  king  was  beheaded !  Fra.  Thompson,  D.D. 


Progress  of  Education.  107 

of  scolarship  began  to  be  laid  aside,  and  general  information 
was  more  prized  than  what  is  technically  called  learning.  Books 
of  voyages  and  travels  were  printed  in  considerable  numbers,  and 
read  with  avidity.  Ilakluyt  published  his  collection  of  voyages  ; 
he  was  appointed  lecturer  on  geography  at  Oxford,  and  was  the 
first  to  introduce  maps,  globes,  and  spheres  into  the  common 
schools.  Purchas  published  his  Pilgrimage ;  George  Sandys, 
his  Travels  and  Researches  on  Classical  Antiquities ;  Knowles, 
his  History  of  the  Turks;  Camden,  his  Annals  of  Queen 
Elizabeth ;  Speed,  his  Chronicle  ;  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury, 
his  Life  of  Henry  VIII.;  and  Lord  Bacon,  his  Life  of 
Henry  VII. 

Among  the  earliest  results  of  the  intellectual  progress  of  the 
age  was  an  extension  of  the  established  plan  of  education,  as  far, 
at  least,  as  regarded  youths  of  family  and  fortune.  Peacham's 
"  Complete  Gentleman,"  addressed  to  his  pupil,  Thomas  Howard, 
fourth  son  of  the  Earl  of  Arundel,  presents  us  with  a  summary 
of  the  requirements  at  this  time  necessary  to  a  man  of  rank. 
He  stigmatises  the  class  of  schoolmasters,  so  often  ignorant  and 
incompetent,  and  generally  rough  and  even  barbarous  to  their 
pupils,  who  were  "pulled  by  the  ears,  lashed  over  the  face, 
beaten  about  the  head  with  the  great  end  of  the  rod,  smitten 
upon  the  lips  for  every  slight  offence,  with  the  ferula,"  etc. 
Domestic  tutors  he  represents  to  have  been  still  worse  ;  ignorant 
and  mean-spirited  men,  engaged  by  sordid  persons  at  a  pitiful 
salary,  and  encouraged  to  expect  their  reward  in  some  family 
living,  to  be  bestowed  as  the  meed  of  their  servility  and  false 
indulgence.  Peacham  blames  parents  for  sending  to  the  univer 
sities  "young  things  of  twelve,  thirteen,  or  fourteen,  that  have 
no  more  care  than  to  expect  the  carrier,  and  where  to  sup  on 
Fridays  and  fasting  nights ;  no  further  thought  of  study  than  to 
trim  up  their  studies  with  pictures,  and  to  place  the  fairest  books 
in  open  view,  which,  poor  lads,  they  scarce  ever  open,  or  under 
stand  not."  .  .  .  "Other  fathers,  if  they  perceive  any  wildness 
or  unstayedness  in  their  children,"  hastily  despairing  of  their 
"  ever  proving  scholars  or  fit  for  anything  else,  to  mend  the 
matter,  send  them  either  to  the  court  to  serve  as  pages,  or  into 
France  and  Italy  to  see  fashions  and  mend  their  manners,  where 
they  become  ten  times  worse."  We  gather  from  Peacham's 
work,  that  geography,  with  the  elements  of  astronomy,  geometry, 
and  mechanics  ;  the  study  of  antiquities,  comprising  mythology 
and  the  knowledge  of  medals,  and  the  theory  and  practice  of  the 
arts  of  design,  —  were  parts  of  learning  now  almost  for  the  first 
time  enumerated  amongst  the  becoming  accomplishments  of  an 
English  gentleman. 


108  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  has  sketched  a  plan  of  education 
still  more  extensive,  being  modeled  apparently  on  his  own 
acquirements.  lie  advises  that  after  mastering  the  grammar, 
the  pupil  should  proceed  with  Greek,  in  preference  to  Latin,  on 
account  of  the  excellence  of  the  writers  of  that  language  "  in  all 
learning."  Geography  and  the  state  and  manners  of  nations  he 
would  have  thoroughly  learned,  and  the  use  of  the  celestial  globe ; 
judicial  astrology  for  general  predictions  only,  as  having  no 
power  to  foreshow  particular  events  ;  arithmetic  and  geometry 
"in  some  good  bold  measure;"  and  rhetoric  and  oratory.  Like 
Bacon,  he  seems  much  addicted  to  medical  empiricism,  and 
enjoins  the  study  of  drugs  and  antidotaries.  lie  speaks  of 
botany  as  a  pursuit  highly  becoming  a  gentleman,  and  judiciously 
recommends  anatomy  as  a  remedy  against  atheism.*  He  recom 
mends  riding  the  great  horse  and  fencing ;  but  disapproves  of 
"riding  running  horses,  because  there  is  much  cheating  in  that 
kind,  and  hunting  takes  up  too  much  time."  "Dicing  and  card 
ing"  he  condemns. 

Female  education,  in  the  higher  class,  shared  in  the  advance 
ment.  In  classical  learning,  the  reign  of  James  supplied  no 
rivals  to  the  daughters  of  Sir  Anthony  Cooke,  to  Lady  Jane 
Grey,  or  Queen  Elizabeth ;  but  Lady  Anne  Clifford  received 
instructions  from  Daniel  in  history,  poetry,  and  general  literature  ; 
Lucy  Harrington,  afterward  Countess  of  Bedford,  was  a  med 
alist  and  Latin  scholar;  Lady  Wroth,  born  a  Sidney,  was  both 
herself  a  writer  and  a  patroness  of  the  learned.  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son,  whose  admirable  Memoirs  of  her  husband  bespeak  a  highly 
cultivated  mind,  informs  us  that  at  about  the  age  of  seven,  she 
"had  at  one  time  eight  tutors  in  several  qualities  —  languages, 
music,  drawing,  writing,  and  needle-work."  f 

A    GOOD    EDUCATION    IX    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTUKY. 

"To  learn  to  read  and  write"  appears  to  have  been  the  .-um 
of  good  Education  two  centuries  and  a  half  since.  Dekkcr.  a 
dramatist  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  however, 
makes  a  man  of  substance  who  is  asked,  "  Can  you  read  and 
write,  then?"  reply,  "As  most  of  your  gentlemen  do  —  my  bond 
has  been  taken  with  my  mark  at  it."  Public  records  of  the 
days  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I.  show  that  some  of  the  men  in 
authority  —  worshipful  burgesses  and  aldermen  —  as  commonly 
made  their  marks  as  others  signed  their  names  in  fair  Italian  or 
German  hands.  There  must  be  a  general  reason  for  this,  besides 

*  Memoirs  of  tho  Court  of  King  Charles  the  First.    By  Lucy  Aikin. 
tlbid 


Progress  of  Education.  109 

the  particular  aptitude,  or  the  particular  imfitness,  of  the  indi 
vidual  for  acquiring  the  rudiments  of  learning.  The  reason  is 
tolerably  obvious.  The  endowed  Grammar-schools  which  sur 
vived  the  Reformation  were  few  in  number,  and  were  not 
established  upon  any  broad  principles  of  diffusing  education 
throughout  the  land.  Where  they  were  established  by  Royal 
charter,  or  by  the  zeal  of  individuals,  they  did  their  work  of 
keeping  the  sources  of  knowledge  open  to  a  portion  of  the 
people ;  some  of  the  children  of  the  middle  classes  availed  them 
selves  of  their  advantages,  and  could  write  a  Latin  letter  as  well 
as  make  a  fair  ledger  entry ;  others,  and  there  was  no  conse 
quent  derogation  from  their  respectability,  kept  their  accounts 
by  the  score  and  the  tally,  and  left  the  Latin  to  the  curate.  The 
learning  of  the  middle  classes  was  then  won  by  them  as  a  prize 
in  a  lottery. 

Now,  at  the  end  of  two  centuries,  we  find  the  same  inequality 
still  prevailing  amongst  what  we  term  the  lower  classes.  The 
old  test  of  the  spread  of  the  rudiments  of  knowledge,  in  the 
exhibition  of  the  ability  to  write,  existed  to  our  time.  The 
Report  of  the  Registrar-General  for  the  year  1846  says:  "Per 
sons  when  they  are  married,  are  required  to  sign  the  marriage 
register;  if  they  cannot  write  their  names,  they  sign  with  a 
mark:  the  result  has  hitherto  been,  that  nearly  one  man  in  three, 
and  one  woman  in  two  married,  sign  with  marks." 

SIR    MATTHEW   HALE's    PLAN    OF    INSTRUCTION. 

The  great  lawyer  of  this  and  the  succeeding  reign,  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  in  his  "Advice  to  his  Grandchildren,"  and  "Counsels  of  a 
Father,"  has  left  the  following  course  of  instruction  for  sons: 
Till  eight,  English  reading  only.  From  eight  to  sixteen,  the 
grammar-school.  Latin  to  be  thoroughly  learned,  Greek  more 
slightly.  From  sixteen  to  seventeen  at  the  university,  or  under 
a  tutor:  more  Latin,  but  chiefly  arithmetic,  geometry,  and 
geodesy.  From  seventeen  to  nineteen  or  twenty,  "logic,  natural 
philosophy,  and  metaphysics,  according  to  the  ordinary  discipline 
of  the  university ;"  but  after  "  some  systems  or  late  topical  or 
philosophical  tracts,"  the  pupil  to  be  chiefly  exercised  in  Aris 
totle.  Afterward,  should  he  follow  no  profession,  yet  to  gain 
some  knowledge  of  divinity,  law,  and  physics,  especially  anatomy. 
Also  of  "husbandry,  planting,  and  ordering  of  a  country  farm." 
For  recreations,  he  advises  "reading  of  history,  mathematics, 
experimental  philosophy,  nature  of  trees,  plants,  or  insects, 
mathematical  observations,  measuring  land;  nay,  the  more 
cleanly  exercise  of  smithery,  watchmaking,  carpentry,  joinery 
work  of  all  kinds." 


110  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


NEWSPAPERS    INTRODUCED. 

The  Newspaper,  which  has  now  existed  in  England  for  nearly 
two  centuries  and  a  quarter,  has  from  the  first  proved  an  active 
element  of  civilization,  instruction,  and  popular  enlightenment; 
until  it  has  finally  been  elevated  into  a  "Fourth  Estate."  In 
former  times,  much  of  the  intelligence  conveyed  in  newspapers 
was  crude  and  ill-told:  but  so  gigantic  have  been  the  improve 
ments  in  the  newspaper  of  the  present  century,  that  it  is  not  too 
much  to  regard  it  as  a  powerful  adjunct,  if  not  a  direct  agent,  in 
the  education  of  the  people.  Its  origin,  therefore,  should  be 
noticed  in  the  present  work. 

Until  lately  it  was  believed  that  the  three  numbers  of  "The 
Engli>h  Mercuric,"  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  and  pro 
fessing  to  record  the  attack  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  were  the  first 
newspapers  printed  in  England;  upon  the  credit  of  which  the 
invention  was  given  to  Lord  Burleigh.  In  1840,  however,  this 
"  Mercuric"  was  proved  to  be  a  clumsy  forgery.*  Pamphlets 
containing  foreign  news  began  to  be  occasionally  published 
during  the  reign  of  James  I.  The  first  of  these  news-pamphlets, 
published  at  regular  intervals,  appears  to  have  been  "The  News 
of  the  Present  Week,"  edited  by  Nathaniel  Butter,  which  was 
started  in  1622,  in  the  early  days  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War, 
and  was  continued,  in  conformity  with  its  title,  as  a  weekly 
publication. 

But  the  English  newspaper,  properly  so  called,  at  least  that 
containing  domestic  intelligence,  commences  with  the  Long 
Parliament.  The  earliest  discovered  is  a  few  leaves,  entitled 
"The  Diurnal  Occurrences,  or  Daily  Proceedings  of  Both 
Houses,  in  this  great  and  happy  Parliament,  from  the  3d  of 
November,  1G40,  to  the  3d  of  November,  1G41."  More  than 
a  hundred  newspapers,  with  different  titles,  appear  to  have 
been  published  between  this  date  and  the  death  of  Charles 
I.;  and  upward  of  80  others  between  that  event  and  the 
Restoration. 

Where  our  modern  newspapers  begin,  the  series  of  our 
chroniclers  closes,  with  Sir  Richard  Baker's  "  Chronicles  of  the 
Kings  of  England," — first  published  in  1G41.  It  was  several 
times  reprinted,  and  was  a  great  favorite  with  our  ancestors  for 
two  or  three  succeeding  generations ;  but  it  has  now  lost  all  its 
interest,  except  for  a  few  passages  relating  to  the  author's  own 
time ;  and  Sir  Richard  and  his  Chronicle  are  now  popularly 
remembered  principally  as  the  great  historical  authorities  of 

*  For  the  details  of  this  discovery,  see  Popular  Errors  Explained  and  Illustrated,  pp.  G1-C3. 


Progress  of  Education.  Ill 

Addison's     Sir    Roger    de    Coverly. —  (See      Spectator,    No. 

329.)'* 

To  conclude  —  the  educational  effect  of  Newspapers  has  re 
sulted  from  the  perusal  of  them  encouraging  and  keeping  alive 
the  habit  of  reading  ;  for  a  newspaper  is  to  the  general  reader 
far  more  attractive  than  a  book  —  in  fact,  a  man  can  read  a  news 
paper  when  he  cannot  read  anything  else.  He  often  finds,  how 
ever,  that  fully  to  understand  the  news  of  the  day,  he  must  have 
recourse  to  books  —  so  difficult  is  it  for  educated  persons,  who 
now  write  in  newspapers,  to  write  with  sufficient  simplicity  to  be 
invariably  understood  by  the  uneducated,  or  rather  the  imper 
fectly  educated.  It  is,  moreover,  in  chronicling  the  progress  of 
our  educational  institutions  —  from  the  university  to  the  ragged- 
school  —  and  in  the  fearless  advocacy  of  the  great"  cause  of  pub 
lic  instruction  and  political  rights  —  that  the  newspaper  must  be 
regarded  as  the  most  powerful  aid  to  education. 

MILTON'S  SYSTEM  OF  INSTRUCTION. 

Of  the  educational  movements  of  this  period,  the  above  was 
the  most  remarkable,  inasmuch  as  it  was  grounded  upon  active 
experience.  The  education  of  John  Milton,  one  of  the  great 
lights  of  this  period,  and  himself  "  an  actual  schoolmaster,"  was 
conducted  with  great  care.  He  was  born  Dec.  9,  1608,  in 
Bread-street,  Cheapside,  where  his  father  was  a  scrivener,  Ipving 
at  the  sign  of  the  Spread  Eagle,  the  armorial  ensign  of  his  fam 
ily.  The  poet  was  baptized  in  the  adjoining  church  of  Allhal- 
lows,  where  the  register  of  his  baptism  is  still  preserved.  He 
was  first  placed  under  a  person  of  Puritan  opinions,  named 
Young,  who  was  master  of  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  during  the 
Protectorate.  At  fifteen  he  was  sent,  even  then  an  accomplished 
scholar,  to  St.  Paul's  School,  London,  under  Alexander  Gill. 
Prom  St.  Paul's  he  proceeded  to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
where,  as  the  college  register  informs  us,  he  was  admitted,  Feb. 
12,  1G24.  At  the  university  he  was  distinguished  for  the  pecu 
liar  excellence  of  his  Latin  verses,  and,  according  to  his  own 
statement,  he  met  with  "  more  than  ordinary  favor  and  respect " 
during  the  seven  years  of  his  stay  here.  Dr.  Johnson,  however, 
"  is  ashamed  to  relate  what  he  fears  is  true,  that  Milton  was  one 
of  the  last  students  in  either  university  that  suffered  the  public 
indignity  of  corporal  correction,"  or  flogging ;  but  there  appears 

*  During  the  time  that  Sidney  Godolphin  filled  the  office  of  Lord  High  Treasurer,  between 
the  years  1701  and  1710,  he  occasionally  visited  his  seat  in  Cornwall.  No  conveyances 
then  proceeded  regularly  onward  further  west  than  Exeter  ;  but  when  certain  masses  of 
letters  had  accumulated,  the  whole  -were  usually  forwarded  together  by  what  was  called 
u  the  Post."  But  the  Lord  High  Treasurer  engaged  a  weekly  messenger  from  Exeter  to 
bring  his  letters,  dispatches,  and  the  newspaper :  and  on  the  fixed  day  of  the  messenger's 
arrival,  the  gentlemen  assembled  at  Godolphin  House,  from  many  miles  round,  to  hear  the 
newspaper  read  in  the  Great  Hall. 


112  School-Days  of  Eminent  Hen. 

small  reason  to  believe  the  fact.  Milton  was  df-urned  for  the 
church,  but  he  preferred  a  "blameless  silence"  to  what  he  con 
sidered  "  servitude  and  forswearing."  At  this  time,  in  his  twenty- 
first  year,  he  had  written  his  grand  Hymn  on  the  Xaticity,  any 
one  verse  of  which  was  sufficient  to  show  that  a  new  and  great 
light  was  about  to  rise  on  English  poetry.  In  1032  he  retired 
from  the  university,  having  taken  his  degree  of  M.A.,  and  went 
to  his  father's  house  at  Ilorton,  Bucks:  here,  during  a  residence 
of  five  years,  he  read  over  all  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics,  and 
here  he  wrote  his  Arcades,  Comus,  and  Lycidas.  In  1637,  on 
the  death  of  his  mother,  Milton  traveled  into  Italy,  during  which 
journey  he  was  introduced  to  Grotius,  to  Galileo,  and  to  Tassc>*> 
patron,  Manso.  On  Milton's  return  to  England,  he  devoted  him 
self  to  the  education  of  his  nephews,  John  and  Edward  Phillips, 
at  his  house  in  Aldersgate-street,  which  was  then  "freer  from 
noise  than  any  other  in  London."  Of  Milton's  system  of  teach 
ing,  we  gather,  from  his  letter  to  Mr.  Ilartlib,  that  the  knowledge 
of  words  is  best  obtained  in  union  with  the  knowledge  of  things; 
that  "language  is  but  the  instrument  conveying  to  us  things  use 
ful  to  be  known."  He  looked  upon  the  reading  of  good  books 
as  the  best  and  only  means  of  obtaining  a  knowledge  of  lan 
guage,  wherefore  he  protests  against  "  the  preposterous  exaction 
of  forcing  the  empty  wits  of  children  to  compose  themes,  ver-<  s, 
and  orations,"  as  a  way  to  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the  language  ; 
for  he  regards  them  as  "  the  acts  of  ripest  judgment,  and  the 
final  work  of  a  head  filled  by  long  reading  and  observing,  with 
elegant  maxims,  and  copious  invention."  He  preferred  physical 
studies  to  humane  or  moral  studies ;  but  like  Bacon,  he  protests 
against  that  method  which  starts  from  abstractions  and  conclu 
sions  of  the  intellect ;  and  he  maintains  that  all  true  method 
must  begin  from  the  objects  of  sense.  Possibly  his  protests 
against  making  logic  and  metaphysics  the  introduction  to  knowl 
edge  in  the  universities,  when  they  ought  to  be  the  climax  of 
knowledge,  were  more  appropriate  to  his  own  day,  when  boys 
went  to  Cambridge  or  Oxford  at  15  or  12,  than  to  the  present 
time. 

Milton  wished  his  college  to  be  both  school  and  university : 
the  studies,  therefore,  proceed  in  an  ascending  scale,  from  the 
elements  of  grammar  to  the  highest  science,  as  well  as  to  the 
most  practical  pursuits.  The  younger  boys  are  to  be  especially 
trained  to  a  clear  and  distinct  pronunciation,  "  as  like  as  may  be 
to  the  Italian."  Books  are  to  be  given  them  like  Cebes  or  Plu 
tarch,  which  will  "  win  them  early  to  the  love  of  virtue  and  true 
labor."  In  some  hour  of  the  day  they  are  to  be  taught  the  rules 
of  arithmetic  and  the  elements  of  geometry.  The  evenings  are 


Progress  of  Education.  113 

to  be  taken  up  "with  the  easy  grounds  of  religion,  and  the  study 
of  Scripture."  In  the  next  stage  they  begin  to  study  books  on 
agriculture,  Cato,  Varro,  and  Columella.  These  books  will  make 
them  gradually  masters  of  ordinary  Latin  prose,  and  will  be  at 
the  same  time  "  occasions  of  inciting  and  enabling  them  hereafter 
to  improve  the  tillage  of  their  country."  The  use  of  maps  and 
globes  is  to  be  learnt  from  modern  authors ;  but  Greek  is  to  be 
studied  as  soon  as  the  grammar  is  learnt,  in  the  "  historical  phy 
siology  of  Aristotle  and  Theophrastus."  Latin  and  Greek  authors 
together  are  to  teach  the  principles  of  arithmetic,  geometry, 
astronomy,  and  geography.  Instruction  in  architecture,  fortifi 
cation,  and  engineering  follows.  In  natural  philosophy,  we 
ascend  through  the  history  of  meteors,  minerals,  plants  and  liv 
ing  creatures,  to  anatomy.  Anatomy  leads  on  to  the  study  of 
medicine.  Milton  would  have  us  always  conversant  with  facts 
rather  than  with  names.  He  aims  at  the  useful  as  directly  as 
the  most  professed  utilitarian.  The  pupils  are  to  have  "  the 
helpful  experiences  of  hunters,  fowlers,  fishermen,  shepherds, 
gardeners,  and  apothecaries "  to  assist  them  in  their  natural 
studies.  These  studies  are  to  increase  their  interest  in  Hesiod, 
in  Lucretius,  and  in  the  Georgics  of  Virgil. 

In  other  words,  the  tendency  of  Milton's  scheme  was  not  so 
much  to  supply  the  then  existing  deficiency  of  instruction  in  the 
knowledge  of  nature,  or  to  substitute  some  other  treatise  on  such 
matters  for  the  works  of  Aristotle,  but  to  exchange,  as  quietly 
as  possible,  and  at  the  same  time  as  decidedly,  the  merely  formal 
routine  of  classical  teaching  for  one  in  which  the  books  that  were 
read  might  arouse  thought  as  well  as  exercise  memory.  His 
list  comprises  almost  all  the  technical  treatises  extant  in  Latin 
and  Greek,  but  excludes  history  and  almost  all  the  better  known 
books  of  poetry,  probably  because  he  only  intended  it  for  chil 
dren,  and  postponed  such  subjects  for  the  instruction  or  amuse 
ment  of  riper  years.  His  aims  were  not  those  of  a  mathemati 
cian  or  the  philosopher  of  nature  ;  the  state,  not  science,  was  in 
his  view,  and  his  object  was  to  make,  not  good  members  of  a 
university,  but  well-informed  citizens.  To  this  tend  his  eulogy 
of  manly  exercises  and  his  plans  for  a  common  table,  which 
could  have  had  little  importance  in  the  eyes  of  a  student.  But 
the  ends  of  Milton's  system  were  as  noble  and  as  practicable  as 
those  of  any  that  was  ever  conceived. 

LOCKE'S    SYSTEM    OF    EDUCATION. 

Equally  illustrative  of  the  important  business  of  Education 
are  the  writings  of  John  Locke,  one  of  the  wisest  and  sincerest 
of  Englishmen.     He  was  born  at  Wrington,  near  Bristol,  in  1 632. 
8 


114  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

II<  was  the  eldest  of  two  sons,  and  was  educated  with  great  care 
by  his  father,  of  whom  he  always  spoke  with  the  highest  respect 
and  affection.  In  the  early  part  of  his  life,  his  father  exacted 
the  utmost  deference  from  his  son,  but  gradually  treated  him 
with  less  and  less  reserve,  and  when  grown  up,  lived  with  him 
on  terms  of  the  most  entire  friendship ;  so  much  so,  that  Locke 
mentioned  the  fact  of  his  father  having  expressed  his  regret  for 
giving  way  to  his  anger,  and  striking  him  once  in  his  childhood 
when  he  did  not  deserve  it.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  written  in 
the  latter  part  of  his  life,  Locke  thus  expresses  himself  on  the 
conduct  of  a  father  toward  his  son : 

'*  That  which  I  have  often  blamed  as  an  Indiscreet  and  dangerous  practice  in  many 
fathers,  viz,  to  be  very  indulgent  to  their  children  whilst  they  are  little,  and  as  they 
come  to  ripe  years  to  lay  great  restraint  upon  them  and  live  with  greater  reserve 
toward  them,  which  usually  produces  an  ill  understanding  between  father  and  son, 
which  cannot  but  be  of  bad  consequences ;  and  I  think  fathers  would  generally  do 
better,  as  their  sons  grow  up,  to  take  them  into  a  nearer  familiarity,  and  live  with 
them  with  as  much  freedom  and  friendship  as  their  age  and  temper  will  allow." 

Locke  was  next  placed  at  Westminster  School,  from  which  he 
was  elected,  in  1651,  to  Christchurch,  Oxford.  Here  he  ap 
plied  himself  diligently  to  the  study  of  classical  literature  ;  and 
by  the  private  reading  of  the  works  of  Bacon  and  Descartes,  he 
sought  to  nourish  that  philosophical  spirit  which  he  did  not 
find  in  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle,  as  taught  in  the  school  at 
Oxford.  Though  the  writings  of  Descartes  may  have  con 
tributed,  by  their  precision  and  scientific  method,  to  the  forma 
tion  of  Locke's  philosophical  style,  it  was  the  principle  of  the 
Baconian  method  of  observation  which  gave  to  the  mind  of 
Locke  that  taste  for  experimental  studies  which  forms  the 
basis  of  his  own  system,  and  probably  determined  his  choice 
of  a  profession.  lie  adopted  that  of  medicine,  which,  how 
ever,  the  weakness  of  his  constitution  prevented  him  from 
practicing. 

Of  the  writings  of  Locke,  it  must  suffice  for  us  to  mention 
his  great  work,  An  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding, 
in  which,  setting  aside  the  whole  doctrine  of  innate  notions 
and  principles,  the  author  traces  all  ideas  to  two  sources, 
sensation  and  reflection  ;  treats  at  large  of  the  nature  of  ideas, 
simple  and  complex ;  of  the  operation  of  the  human  under 
standing  in  forming,  distinguishing,  compounding,  and  associat 
ing  them  ;  of  the  manner  in  which  words  are  applied  as  the 
representatives  of  ideas ;  of  the  difficulties  and  obstructions  in 
the  search  after  truth,  which  arise  from  the  imperfection  of 
these  signs  ;  and  of  the  nature,  reality,  kinds,  degrees,  casual 
hindrances,  and  necessary  limits  of  human  knowledge.  The  in 
fluence  of  this  work,  written  in  a  plain,  clear,  expressive  style, 


Progress  of  Education.  115 

upon  the  aims  and  habits  of  philosophical  inquirers,  as  well  as 
upon  the  minds  of  educated  men  in  general,  has  been  ex 
tremely  beneficial.  Locke  also  wrote  Thoughts  upon  Education, 
to  which  Rousseau  is  largely  indebted  for  his  Emile.  The  fol 
lowing  passage  on  the  importance  of  Moral  Education  is  very- 
striking  : 

"  Under  whose  care  soever  a  child  is  put  to  be  taught  during  the  tender  and  flexible 
years  of  his  life,  this  is  certain,  it  should  be  one  who  thinks  Latin  and  languages  the 
least  part  of  education ;  one  who,  knowing  how  much  -virtue  and  a  well-tempered  soul 
is  to  be  preferred  to  any  sort  of  learning  or  language,  makes  it  his  chief  business  to  form 
the  mind  of  his  scholars,  and  give  that  a  right  disposition ;  which,  if  once  got,  though  all 
the  rest  should  be  neglected,  would  in  due  time  produce  all  the  rest ;  and  which,  if  it  be 
not  got,  and  settled  so  as  to  keep  out  ill  and  vicious  habits— languages  and  sciences,  and 
all  the  other  accomplishments  of  education,  will  be  to  no  purpose  but  to  make  the  worse 
and  more  dangerous  man." 

GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

John  Aubrey,  the  "Wiltshire  antiquary,  has  left  this  picture-in- 
little  of  the  public  schools  of  his  time : 

"  Before  the  Reformation,  youth  were  generally  taught  Latin 
in  the  monasteries,  and  young  women  had  their  education  not  at 
Hackney,  as  now,  1678,  but  at  nunneries,  where  they  learnt 
needle-work,  confectionary,  surgery,  physic  (apothecaries  and 
surgeons  being  at  that  time  very  rare),  writing,  drawing,  etc. 
Old  Jacquar,  now  living,  has  often  seen  from  his  house  the  nuns 
of  St.  Mary  Kington,  in  Wilts,  coming  forth  into  the  Nymph 
Hay  with  their  rocks  and  wheels  to  spin,  sometimes  to  the  num 
ber  of  threescore  and  ten,  all  whom  were  not  nuns,  but  young 

girls  sent  there  for  education." "  The  gentry  and 

citizens  had  little  learning  of  any  kind,  and  their  way  of  breed 
ing  up  children  was  suitable  to  the  rest.  They  were  as  severe 
to  their  children  as  their  schoolmasters,  and  their  schoolmasters 
as  the  masters  of  the  House  of  Correction :  the  child  perfectly 
loathed  the  sight  of  his  parents  as  the  slave  his  torture.  Gen 
tlemen  of  thirty  and  forty  years  old  were  made  to  stand  like 
mutes  and  fools  bareheaded  before  their  parents ;  and  the  daugh 
ters  (grown  women)  were  to  stand  at  the  cupboard-side  during 
the  whole  time  of  their  proud  mother's  visits,  unless  (as  the 
fashion  was)  leave  was  desired  forsooth  that  a  cushion  should  be 
given  them  to  kneel  upon,  brought  them  by  the  serving-man, 
after  they  had  done  penance  by  standing.  The  boys  had  their 
foreheads  turned  up  and  stiffened  by  spittle." 

INFLUENCE    OF   THE    WRITINGS    OF    LORD    BACON. 

"  Everything  relating  to  the  state  of  the  natural  sciences  at 
this  period,"  says  Dr.  Vaughan,  "  may  be  found  in  the  writings 
of  Bacon.  It  was  reserved  to  the  genius  of  that  extraordinary 
man  to  direct  the  scientific  minds  not  only  of  his  country  but  of 


116  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Christendom,  into  the  true  path  of  knowledge  ;  to  call  the  atten 
tion  of  men  from  metaphysical  abstraction  to  the  facts  of  nature  ; 
and  in  this  manner  to  perform  the  two  most  important  services 
that  could  be  rendered  to  the  future  world  of  philosophy, — fir.-t. 
by  indicating  how  much  it  had  to  unlearn,  and  how  much  to  ac 
quire  ;  and  secondly,  by  pointing  out  the  method  in  which  the 
one  process  and  the  other  might  be  successfully  conducted  ;  and, 
as  this  system  depended  on  the  most  rigid  and  comprehensive 
process  of  experiment,  it  obtained  for  its  illustrious  author  the 
title  of  '  the  Father  of  Experimental  Philosophy.' " 

This  subject  is  too  vast  for  a  running  comment  upon  the  pro 
gress  of  Learning  like  that  which  is  here  attempted.  It  is  by 
his  Essays  that  Bacon  is  best  known  to  the  multitude.  The 
Novum  Organum  and  De  Augmentis  are  much  talked  of,  but 
little  read.  They  have,  indeed,  produced  a  vast  effect  upon  the 
opinions  of  mankind  ;  but  they  have  produced  it  through  the 
operation  of  intermediate  agents.  They  have  moved  the  intel 
lects  which  have  moved  the  world.  It  is  in  the  Essays  alone 
that  the  mind  of  Bacon  is  brought  into  immediate  contact  with 
the  minds  of  ordinary  readers.  There  he  opens  an  exoteric 
school,  and  talks  to  plain  men,  in  language  which  everybody  un 
derstands,  about  things  in  which  everybody  is  interested.  lie 
has  thus  enabled  those  who  must  otherwise  have  taken  his 
merits  on  trust,  to  judge  for  themselves ;  and  the  great  body 
of  readers  have,  during  several  generations,  acknowledged  that 
the  man  who  has  treated  with  such  consummate  ability  questions 
with  which  they  are  familiar,  may  well  be  supposed  to  deserve 
all  the  praise  bestowed  on  him  by  those  who  have  sat  in  his 
inner  school.  The  following  passage  from  the  Essays*  is  in 
Bacon's  early  style : 

"  Crafty  men  contemn  studies  ;  simple  men  admire  them  ;  and  wise  men  use  them  :  for 
they  teach  not  their  own  use  :  th:it  is  ;i  wisdom  without  them,  and  won  by  observation. 
Read  not  to  contradict,  nor  to  believe,  but  to  weigh  and  consider.  Some  books  are  to  be 
tasted,  others  to  be  swallowed,  and  some  few  to  be  chewed  and  digested.  Reading  makcth 
a  full  man,  conference  a  ready  man,  and  writing  an  exact  man.  And  thert-fon-,  if  a  man 
write  little,  he  had  need  have  a  great  memory  ;  if  he  confer  little,  have  a  present  wit ;  and 
if  he  read  little,  have  much  cunning  to  seem  to  know  that  he  doth  not.  Histories  make 
men  wise,  poets  witty,  the  mathematics  subtle,  natural  philosophy  deep,  morals  grave,  logic 
and  rhetoric  able  to  contend." 

Lord  Macaulay  has  well  observed :  "  It  will  hardly  be  dis 
puted  that  this  is  a  passage  to  be  '  chewed  and  digested.'  AVc 
do  not  believe  that  Thucydides  himself  has  anywhere  com 
pressed  so  much  thought  into  so  small  a  space." 

No  book  ever  made  so  great  a  revolution  in  the  mode  of  think- 

*  For  educational  purposes  we  recommend  attention  to  the  ably  edited  reprints  of  the 
E*says,  and  The  Advancement  of  Learning,  by  Thomas  Markey,  M.A.  Archbishop 
Whately's  annotated  edition  of  the  Essays  is  intended  for  a  different  class  of  student*. 


Progress  of  Education.  117 

ing,  overthrew  so  many  prejudices,  introduced  so  many  new 
opinions — as  the  Novum  Organum*  Its  nicety  of  observation 
has  never  been  surpassed  ;  it  blazes  with  wit,  but  with  wit  which 
is  employed  only  to  illustrate  and  decorate  the  truth.  But 
what  is  most  to  be  admired  is  the  vast  capacity  of  that  intel 
lect  which,  without  effort,  takes  in  at  once  all  the  domains  of 
science — all  the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future — all  the  en 
couraging  signs  of  the  passing  times — all  the  bright  hopes  of 
the  coming  age. 

Lord  Bacon  wrote  paraphrases  of  the  Psalms,  of  which  it  has 
been  said:  the  "fine  gold  of  David  is  so  thoroughly  melted 
down  with  the  refined  silver  of  Bacon,  that  the  mixture  shows 
nothing  of  alloy,  but  a  metal  greater  in  bulk,  and  differing  in 
show  from  either  of  the  component  elements,  yet  exhibiting,  at 
the  same  time,  a  luster  wholly  derived  from  the  most  precious 
of  them." 

THE    FIRST    SCIENTIFIC    TREATISES    IN  ENGLISH. 

Here  should  be  mentioned  the  founder  of  the  school  of  Eng 
lish  writers,  that  is  to  say,  to  any  useful  or  sensible  purpose, — 
Robert  Recorde,  the  physician,  a  man  whose  memory  deserves, 
on  several  accounts,  a  much  larger  portion  of  fame  than  it  has 
met  with.  He  was  the  first  who  wrote  on  Arithmetic,  and  the 
first  who  wrote  on  Geometry  in  English ;  the  first  who  intro 
duced  Algebra  into  England  ;  the  first  who  wrote  on  Astronomy 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  Sphere  in  England ;  and  finally,  the 
first  Englishman  (in  all  probability)  who  adopted  the  system  of 
Copernicus.  Recorde  was  also  the  inventor  of  the  present 
method  of  extracting  the  square-root ;  the  inventor  of  the  sign 
of  equality  ;  and  the  inventor  of  the  method  of  extracting  the 
square-root  of  multinomial  algebraic  quantities.  According  to 
Wood,  his  family  was  Welsh,  and  he  himself  a  Fellow  of  All 
Souls'  College,  Oxford,  in  15ol ;  he  died  in  1558  in  the  King's 
Bench  Prison,  where  he  was  confined  for  debt.  Some  have  said  ' 
that  he  was  physician  to  Edward  VI.  and  Mary,  to  whom  his 
books  are  mostly  dedicated.  They  are  all  written  in  dialogue 
between  master  and  scholar,  in  the  rude  English  of  the  time. 

INVENTION  OF  LOGARITHMS. — GUNTEIl's  SCALE. 

Another  great  benefactor  to  science  was  Baron  Napier,  of 
Merchiston,  by  his  great  invention  of  Logarithms,  in  1614, 
which,  from  his  own  day  to  the  present  hour,  has  been  one  of 
the  most  active  and  efficient  servants  of  all  the  sciences  depend 
ent  upon  calculation ;  nor  could  those  of  them  in  which  the 
most  splendid  triumphs  have  been  achieved  have  been  possibly 


118  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

carried  to  the  heights  they  have  without  the  assistance  of  Lo 
garithms. 

By  reducing  to  a  few  days  tho  labor  of  many  months  (,«ay«  Laplace),  it  doubles .  ns  it 
were,  the  life  of  an  astronomer,  besides  freeing  him  from  the  errors  and  dissent  insepara 
ble  from  long  calculations.  As  an  invention  it  i<  particularly  gratif>  inn  to  the  human 
mind,  emanating  as  it  does  exclusively  from  within  itself.  Logarithms  (says  Pro!' 
Playfair)  have  been  applied  to  numberless  purposes  which  were  not  thought  of  at  the 
time  of  their  first  construction.  Kven  the  sagacity  of  the  author  did  not  see  the  im 
mense  fertility  of  the  invention  he  had  discovered :  he  calculated  his  tables  merely  to 
facilitate  arithmetical  and  chiefly  trigonometrical  computation  :  and  little  imagined  that 
ho  was  at  that  time  constructing  a  scale  whereon  to  measure  the  density  of  the  strata  of  the 
atmosphere  and  the  heights  of  mountains,  that  he  was  actually  computing  the  areas  and 
lengths  of  innumerable  curves,  and  was  preparing  for  a  calculus,  which  was  yet  to  be 
discovered,  to  make  more  clear  many  of  the  most  refined  and  most  valuable  of  its  resources. 
Of  Napier,  therefore,  if  of  any  man,  it  may  safely  be  pronounced,  that  his  name  \\ill 
never  be  eclipsed  by  any  one  more  conspicuous,  or  his  invention  be  superseded  by  any 
thing  more  valuable. 

Napier  s  Bones,  or  Rods,  are  a  contrivance  of  Napier  to  facili 
tate  the  performance  of  multiplication  and  division;  and  might 
be  used  with  advantage  by  young  arithmeticians  in  verification  of 
their  work. 

Of  the  same  period  as  their  invention  is  Gunter's  Scale,  the 
useful  wooden  logarithmic  scale  invented  by  Edmund  Gunter,  to 
whom  we  are  also  indebted  for  the  sector  and  the  common  sur 
veyor's  chain,  and  several  printed  works:  he  was  also  the  author 
of  the  convenient  terms  cosine,  cotangent,  etc. —  for  "sine," 
"tangent,"  etc.,  of  the  complement.  "Whatever,  in  short,"  it 
has  been  observed,  "could  be  done  by  a  well-informed  and 
ready-witted  person  to  make  the  new  theory  of  Logarithms 
more  immediately  available  in  practice  to  those  who  were  not 
skillful  mathematicians,  was  done  by  Gunter." 

THE    SCIENCES    AT    OXFORD    AND    CAMBRIDGE. 

An  acute  writer  in  the  Companion  to  the  Almanac  for  1837 
observes: — "The  University  of  Cambridge  appears  to  have 
acquired  no  scientific  distinction  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Taking 
a>  a  test  the  acquisition  of  celebrity  on  the  Continent,  we  find 
•  that  Bacon,  Sacrobosco,  Greathead,  Eastwood,  etc.,  were  all  of 
Oxford.  The  latter  University  had  its  morning  of  scientific 
splendor,  while  Cambridge  was  comparatively  unknown,  and 
(with  regard,  at  least,  to  definite  college  foundations)  hardly 
beginning  to  exist:  it  had  also  its  noon-day  illustrated  by  the 
names  of  such  men  as  Briggs,  Wren,  Wallis,  Halley,  and 
Bradley.  The  age  of  science  at  Cambridge  is  said  to  have  begun 
with  Francis  Bacon ;  and  but  that  we  think  much  of  the  differ 
ence  between  him  and  his  celebrated  namesake  (Roger  Bacon), 
lies  more  in  time  and  circumstances  than  in  talents  or  feelings: 
we  would  rather  date  from  1GOO  with  the  former,  than  from  1250 
with  the  latter.  Praise  or  blame  on  the  side  of  either  univer- 


Progress  of  Education.  119 

sity  is  out  of  the  question,  seeing  that  the  earlier  foundation  of 
Oxford,  and  its  superiority  in  pecuniary  means,  rendered  all  that 
took  place  highly  probable.  We  rejoice  in  the  recollections  by 
the  production  of  which  we  are  enabled  to  show  that  this  country 
held  a  conspicuous  rank  in  the  philosophy  of  the  Middle  Ages ; 
and  we  cheerfully  and  gratefully  remember  that,  to  the  best  of 
our  knowledge  and  belief,  we  are  in  a  great  measure  indebted  for 
the  liberty  of  writing  our  thoughts  to  the  cultivation  of  the 
liberalizing  sciences  at  Oxford  in  the  dark  ages.  With  regard 
to  the  University  of  Cambridge,  for  a  long  time  there  hardly 
existed  the  materials  for  any  proper  instruction,  even  to  the 
extent  of  pointing  out  what  books  should  be  read  by  a  student 
desirous  of  cultivating  astronomy.  Of  this  we  have  a  remarka 
ble  instance. 

Jeremiah  Horrocks,  who  is  well  known  to  astronomers  as 
having  made  a  greater  step  toward  the  amendment  of  the  lunar 
theory  than  any  Englishman  before  Newton,  and  whose  course 
might  be  well  known  to  every  reader,  but  that  he  died  at  the  age 
of  23,  was  at  Cambridge  in  1633  — 1635.  From  the  age  of 
boyhood  he  had  been  wholly  given  to  the  desire  of  making  him 
self  an  astronomer.  But  he  could  find  no  one  who  could  instruct 
him,  who  could  help  him  by  joining  him  in  the  study — "such 
was  the  sloth  and  languor  which  had  seized  all."  Horrocks  found 
that  books  must  be  used  instead  of  teachers :  these  he  could  not 
obtain  in  the  University ;  nor  could  he  there  even  learn  to  what 
books  he  should  direct  his  attention.  Nor  were  the  books  them 
selves  which  Horrocks  (having  but  small  means,  and  desiring 
the  very  best)  afterward  bought,  in  any  one  instance  that  we 
can  discover,  printed  in  England. 

A  school-book  of  great  popularity  may  be  mentioned  here. 
This  is  the  well-known  "Cocker's  Arithmetic."  The  author, 
born  about  1631,  was  an  engraver  and  a  teacher  of  writing  and 
arithmetic,  and  the  writer  of  several  books  of  exercises  in  pen 
manship,  some  of  them  on  silver  plates.  His  celebrated  "Arith 
metic"  was  not  published  until  after  his  death,  before  1677  :  in 
the  title-page  it  is  described  as  "  a  plain  and  familiar  method, 
suitable  to  the  meanest  capacity,  for  the  full  understanding  of 
that  incomparable  art,  as  it  is  now  taught  by  the  ablest  school 
masters  in  City  and  Country."  The  first  edition  appeared  in 
1677  ;  the  fourth  in  1682  ;  the  thirty-seventh  in  1720  ;  there  is 
no  copy  of  either  edition  in  the  British  Museum,  the  libraries  of 
the  Royal  Society,  Sion  College,  or  the  London  Institution :  a 
copy  of  the  edition  of  1678  has  been  sold  for  8/.  10s.  Cocker's 
Arithmetic  was  the  first  which  entirely  excluded  all  demonstra 
tion  and  reasoning,  and  confined  itself  to  commercial  questions 


120  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

only.  This  was  the  secret  of  its  extensive  circulation:  upon  it, 
nine  out  of  ten  of  the  subsequent  Arithmetics  have  been 
modeled ;  and  every  method  since  the  author's  time  has  been 
"  according  to  Cocker." 

BOYHOOD    AND    EDUCATION    OF    OLIVER    CROMWELL. 

Cromwell,  the  son  of  Robert  Cromwell,  and  his  wife  Eliza 
beth,  was  born  at  Huntingdon,  in  1509.  It  is  traditionally  rela 
ted  that  when  an  infant,  his  life  was  endangered  by  a  great 
monkey  at  his  grandfather's  house  taking  him  out  of  the  cradle. 
and  carrying  him  upon  the  leads  of  the  house,  to  the  dreadful 
alarm  of  the  family  (who  made  beds  and  blankets  ready  in  the 
forlorn  hope  of  catching  him),  but  at  last  brought  him  safely 
down.  It  is  better  established,  Oliver  was  saved  from  drowning 
in  his  youth  by  Mr.  Johnson,  the  curate  of  Cunnington. 

Cromwell  was  educated  at  the  Free  Grammar-school  of  Hun 
tingdon  by  Dr.  Beard,  whose  severity  toward  him  is  said  to 
have  been  more  than  what  was  usual  even  in  that  age  of  barba 
rous  school  discipline.*  He  was  a  resolute,  active  boy,  fond  of 
engaging  in  hazardous  exploits,  and  more  capable  of  hard  study 
than  inclined  to  it.  His  ambition  was  of  a  different  kind,  which 
discovered  itself  even  in  his  youth.  He  is  said  to  have  displaved 
a  more  than  common  emotion  in  playing  the  part  of  Tactus,  who 
finds  a  royal  robe  and  a  crown,  in  the  old  comedy  of  Lingua, 
performed  at  the  Free-school  of  Iluntingdon.f  He  is  said  often, 
in  the  height  of  his  fortune,  to  have  mentioned  a  gigantic  figure 
which,  when  he  was  a  boy,  opened  the  curtains  of  his  bed,  and 
told  him  he  should  be  the  greatest  person  in  the  kingdom.  It  is 
also  related  that  Cromwell  (being  at  his  uncle's  house  at  Hinch- 
inbrook),  when  the  royal  family  rested  there  on  their  way  from 
Scotland,  in  1004,  was  brought  to  play  with  Prince  Charles, 
then  Duke  of  York,  quarreled  with  him,  beat  him,  and  made  his 
nose  bleed  profusely, — which  was  remembered  as  a  bad  omen 
for  the  King  when  Cromwell  began  to  distinguish  himself  in  the 
Civil  Wars. 

Before  Oliver  had  completed  his  seventeenth  year,  he  was 
removed  from  the  school  at  Huntingdon  to  Sydney  Sussex 
College,  Cambridge.  Though  his  passion  for  athletic  exeivi.-e.- 
still  continued,  so  much  so  that  he  is  said  to  have  acquired  tin 
name  of  a  royster  in  the  university,  it  appears  certain  that  lie 
did  not  misspend  his  time  there,  but  that  he  made  a  respectable 

*The  fromUjiicre  to  th«-  Th«-:itro  of  Coil's  .lu-l^ment  is  said  to  be  a  portrait  of  this  severe 
BehoolmMter.  It  represents  him  with  two  scholars  sUiudiug  behind,  a  rod  in  his  hand, 
and  As  in  prasenti  proceeding  from  his  mouth. 

t  Selected  and  abridged  from  Southey. 


Progress  of  Education.  121 

proficiency  in  his  studies.  Within  a  year  of  this,  his  father  died, 
and  his  mother,  to  whose  care  he  appears  to  have  been  left, 
removed  him  from  college.  It  has  been  affirmed  that  he  was 
placed  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  but  that  instead  of  attending  to  the  law, 
he  wasted  his  time  "  in  a  dissolute  course  of  life,  and  good 
fellowship  and  gaming  "  But  Cromwell's  name  is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  registers  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  though  his  son  Richard's 
is.  It  is,  however,  probable  that  Oliver  was  entered  at  some 
other  of  the  inns  of  court.  Returning  thence  to  reside  upon  his 
paternal  property,  he  is  said  to  have  led  a  low  and  boisterous 
life.  However  this  may  have  been,  he  offended  at  this  time  by 
his  irregularities  both  his  paternal  uncle  and  his  maternal  one. 
But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  follies  and  vices  of  Cromwell's 
youth,  it  is  equally  certain  that  he  had  strength  and  resolution 
enough  to  shake  them  off. 

In  after  life  Cromwell  was  not  insensible  to  literary  merit. 
Archbishop  Usher  received  a  pension  from  him ;  Andrew  Mar- 
veil  and  Milton  were  in  his  service;  and  the  latter  always 
affirmed  of  him,  that  he  was  not  so  illiterate  as  was  commonly 
supposed.  He  gave  100/.  yearly  to  the  Professor  of  Divinity 
at  Oxford ;  and  it  is  said  that  he  intended  to  have  erected  at 
Durham  a  college  for  the  northern  counties  of  England. 

During  the  Commonwealth,  an.  1658.  appeared  that  truly  excellent  work  The.  Practice  of 
Christian  Graces,  or,  the  Whole  Duty  of  Man,  which,  not  long  after  its  publication,  was 
translated  into  the  Latin,  French,  and  Welsh  languages.  Bishop  Bull,  one  of  the  greatest 
ornaments  of  our  church,  was  accustomed  to  read  a  chapter  out  of  "  The  Whole  Duty  of 
Man,1'  in  addition  to  the  performance  of  family  prayers  in  his  house  on  Sunday  evenings, 
"  for  the  further  instruction  of  his  family,  particularly  of  those  who  had  been  deprived  of 
going  to  church  by  reason  of  the  necessary  services  of  the  house."  Bishop  Sanderson, 
Isaak  Walton  tells  us,  had  some  prayers  read  at  night  to  him  and  to  a  part  of  his  family 
out  of '-The  Whole  Duty  of  Man."  Dean  Stanhope  says,  "Happy  is  the  man  who  can 
form  his  style  in  plain  practical  preaching,  upon  the  rational,  instructive,  and  familiar  way 
of  the  Whole  Duty  of  Man;"  and  of  its  style  a  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  says, 
"after  a  lapse  of  170  years,  it  contains  scarcely  a  word  or  phrase  which  has  become  super 
annuated."  Yet,  the  real  authorship  of  this  work  has  never  yet  been  settled  on  strong 
and  decisive  evidence.  It  has  been  attributed  to  Bishop  Fell,  Dr.  Allstree,  Bishop  Chappel, 
Archbishop  Sterne.  Lady  Pakington,  and  Dr.  Henry  Hammond  ;  to  Archbishop  Frewen, 
Abraham  Woodhead,  Obadiah  Walker,  Mr.  Fulman,  and  Dr.  Chaplin.  Lady  Pakington's 
claim  is  founded  upon  a  copy  of  the  work,  in  her  handwriting,  being  found  amongst  her 
papers  after  her  death  ;  but,  as  this  lady  was  a  very  devout  person,  and  was  much  acquain 
ted  with  the  divines  of  the  day,  she  is  very  likely  to  have  been  favored  with  a  sight  of  the 
work  before  it  was  printed,  and  to  have  been  allowed  to  take  a  copy  of  it  for  her  own  use. 
The  Editor  of  the  reprint  of  the  work  published  by  Pickering,  in  1842,  adduces  evidence  to 
show  that  the  author  was  Dr.  Sterne,  which  he  considers  strong  enough  to  justify  belief. 
Dr.  Southey  describes  "The  Whole  Duty  of  Man"  as  "a  good  old  book,  which  contains 
the  substance  of  a  course  of  sermons,  addressed  in  the  plainest  language  to  plain  people, 
and  setting  before  them  those  duties  which  they  are  called  upon  to  perform  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  life.  The  author  was  a  person  of  sound  judgment  and  sober  piety,  who  sought 
to  make  his  parishioners  practical  Christians,  and  not  professing  ones ;  and  that  he  was 
humble-minded  there  is  conclusive  proof,  for  he  concealed  his  name."  Until  of  late  years 
the  work  was  generally  to  be  found  among  the  books  of  well-regulated  households ;  and 
we  have  ever  thought  better  of  a  family  for  its  possessing  a  copy  of  "  The  Whole  Duty 
of  Man." 

CHARLES  'THE    SECOND HIS    PATRONAGE    OF     LETTERS. 

Of  the  childhood  and  education  of  Charles  II.  we  find  scanty 


122  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

record.  lie  was  the  eldest  son  of  Charles  I.  and  Henrietta 
Maria  of  France,  and  was  born  at  St.  James's  in  1 030.  He  was 
chiefly  brought  up  by  his  mother  until  he  was  twelve  years  of 
age.  In  his  ninth  year  he  was  created  Prince  of  Wales:  when 
the  Civil  War  broke  out,  he  accompanied  his  father  to  the  battle 
of  Edgehill;  and  in  1G45,  he  served  with  the  royal  troops  in 
the  west  with  the  title  of  general.  Next  year,  on  the  ruin  of 
the  royal  cause,  he  joined  the  Queen,  his  mother,  at  Paris,  and 
he  afterward  took  up  his  residence  at  the  Hague.  This  must 
have  been  almost  the  earliest  opportunity  that  the  Prince  could 
have  had  for  study,  which  must  have  been  of  a  practical  turn. 
Evelyn  describes  Charles  as  "a  lover  of  the  sea,  and  skillful  in 
shipping ;  not  affecting  other  studies  ;  yet  he  had  a  laboratory, 
and  knew  of  many  empirical  medicines,  and  the  easier  mechan 
ical  mathematics ;  he  loved  planting  and  building,  and  brought 
in  a  politer  way  of  living,  which  passed  to  luxury,  and  intoler 
able  expense."  But  this  is  the  language  of  a  courtier. 

Charles's  love  of  the  sea  led  him  early  in  his  reign  to  enter 
tain  the  suggestions  of  certain  governors  of  Christ's  Hospital 
for  the  institution  and  endowment  of  the  Royal  Mathematical 
School.  With  Sir  Robert  Clayton,  it  is  believed,  originated  this 
school ;  and  his  project  being  backed  by  Sir  Jonas  Moore,  then 
Surveyor-General  of  the  Ordnance,  and  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren 
and  Samuel  Pepys ;  and  having  in  its  favor  the  mediation  of 
the  Duke  of  York,  then  Lord  High  Admiral  of  England, —  a 
royal  charter  was  granted,  and  the  school  was  opened  for  40 
boys,  under  the  auspices  of  the  King,  in  the  year  1G73.  Beyond 
the  grant  of  the  charter,  however,  little  was  done  by  Charles 
toward  the  maintenance  of  his  newr  foundation.  His  endow 
ment  did  not  extend  beyond  an  annuity  of  1000/.,  terminating 
at  the  expiration  of  seven  years.  The  King  reserved  as  many 
of  the  boys  as  might  be  required  for  his  own  services ;  and  a 
grant  was  obtained  from  the  Government  by  Pepys  to  be  given 
as  premiums  to  merchant-masters  for  taking  the  other  boys. 
The  revenue  was  also  increased  by  a  gift,  which  it  was  thought 
the  King  would  not  approve  of,  but,  on  being  consulted,  he 
replied,  that  "so  far  was  he  from  disliking,  that  he  would  be 
glad  to  see  any  gentleman  graft  upon  his  stock."  The  school 
flourished:  for  several  years  Pepys  constantly  attended  the 
examination  of  the  boys;  and  Sir  Jonas  Moore,  one  of  the  first 
practical  mathematicians  of  the  day,  commenced  for  the  master's 
use  a  system  of  mathematics,  which  was  completed  by  Halley 
and  Flamsteed. 

Aryother  service  which  Charles  rendered  to  the  higher  class  of 
studies  was  his  incorporation  of  the  Royal  Society,  by  royal 


Progress  of  Education.  123 

charter,  in  16G3,  when  the  King  signed  himself  in  the  charter- 
book  as  the  founder;*  and  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  signed 
as  Fellow.  Charles  also  presented  the  Society  with  a  mace. 

Another  advantage  conferred  on  science  in  this  reign  was 
Charles's  foundation,  in  167G,  of  the  Royal  Observatory  at 
Greenwich,  for  the  benefit  of  astronomy  and  navigation ;  and 
the  appointment  of  Flamsteed  as  the  first  Astronomer  Royal. 

After  the  Restoration,  the  first  steam-engine  is  commonly 
believed  to  have  been  constructed  by  the  Marquis  of  Worcester, 
which  he,  in  his  Century  of  Inventions,  describes  as  "an  admi 
rable  and  most  forcible  way  to  drive  up  water  by  fire."  He 
used  a  cannon  for  his  boiler,  and  he  describes  the  water  as  run 
ning  "like  a  constant  fountain-stream,  40  feet  high;  one  vessel 
of  water  rarified  by  fire,  driveth  up  40  of  cold  water."  This 
engine  was  seen  at  work  in  1GG3,  at  Vauxhall,  by  Sorbiere, 
who  foretold  that  the  invention  would  be  of  greater  use  than 
the  machine  above  Somerset  House,  to  supply  London  with 
water. 

NONCONFORMIST     SCHOOLS     AT     ISLINGTON    AND     NEWINGTON 

GREEN. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  village  of 
Islington  appears  to  have  been  a  refuge  for  Nonconformist 
ministers.  Here,  after  the  Act  of  Uniformity  was  passed,  in 
1662,  some  of  the  ministers  then  ejected  from  the  Church  of 
England  opened  schools.  For  a  time,  however,  they  were  pro 
hibited  from  teaching ;  but  eventually  they  succeeded  in  estab 
lishing  academies  in  different  places.  The  Rev.  Thomas  Doo- 
little,  formerly  Rector  of  St.  Alphage's,  London  Wall,  had  a 
school  at  Islington  about  the  year  1682,  and  prepared  several 
young  men  for  the  ministry,  among  whom  were  the  pious 
Matthew  Henry  and  Dr.  Edmund  Calamy ;  here  the  Rev.  Ralph 
Button,  of  Merton  College,  Oxford,  kept  school,  and  had  for 
one  of  his  pupils  Sir  Joseph  Jekyll.  Several  ministers  also 
opened  schools  at  Newington  Green ;  and  at  one  of  them,  kept 
by  the  Rev.  Charles  Morton,  previously  a  rector  in  Cornwall, 
"  some  score  of  young  ministers  were  educated,  as  well  as  many 
other  good  scholars."  Defoe  was  a  pupil  of  Mr.  Morton's:  he 
says  of  his  instructor,  that  he  was  a  polite  and  profound  scholar, 
and  a  master  who  taught  nothing  either  in  politics  or  science, 
which  was  dangerous  to  monarchical  government,  or  which  was 
improper  for  a  diligent  scholar  to  know.  "  Defoe  was  originally 

*  The  first  charter  (in  Latin)  has  ornamented  initials,  and  a  finely  executed  portrait  o* 
Charles  II.  in  Indian  ink.  The  charter  empowers  the  president  to  wear  his  hat  while  in 
the  chair;  aud  the  fellows  addressed  the  president  bareheaded,  till  he  made  a  sign  for  them 
to  put  011  their  hat?  ;  but  these  customs  are  now  obsolete. 


124  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

intended  for  the  ministry:  he  tells  us,  it  was  his  disaster  first  to 
be  set  apart  for,  and  then  to  be  set  apart  from,  the  honor  of 
that  sacred  employ.  At  TxYwinirt.m  lu-  had  for  his  school-fellow 
the  father  of  the  celebrated  John  Wesley.  Another  Islington 
notoriety  of  this  period  was  Robert  Ferguson,  the  Judas  of 
Dryden's  great  satire,  and  conspicuous  as  an  unprincipled  poli 
tician.  By  birth  a  Scotsman,  he  came  to  England,  and  being 
ejected  from  his  living  in  Kent,  got  to  be  master  of  a  school  at 
Islington,  which  the  Dissenters  had  set  up  as  a  rival  to  the 
schools  of  Westminster  and  the  Charterhouse.  At  length  he 
strayed  into  politics  —  was  deeply  engaged  in  the  Rye  House 
Plot — was  the  shameless  adviser  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth  in 
his  rebellion  —  and  was  deservedly  discarded  by  the  sagacious 
Prince  of  Orange.  His  end,  no  doubt,  was  miserable."  Lord 
Macaulay,  in  his  History,  devotes  several  pages  to  him. 

BOYHOOD    OF   JAMES    II. 

The  early  life  of  this  prince  was  clouded  by  the  political 
troubles  of  the  time,  which,  as  they  prreatly  tended  to  his  per 
sonal  discomfiture,  must  have  materially  interfered  with  his 
instruction.  James  was  the  second  surviving  son  of  Charles  I., 
by  his  queen  Henrietta  Maria,  and  was  born  at  St.  James's  in 
1G33.  He  was  immediately  declared  Duke  of  York,  but  not 
formally  created  to  that  dignity  till  1G43.  After  the  surrender 
of  Oxford  to  Fairfax,  in  1G4G,  the  duke,  with  his  younger 
brother,  Henry,  afterward  created  Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  his 
sister  Elizabeth,  was  committed  by  the  Parliament  to  the  care  of 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  and  he  continued  in  the  custody  of 
that  nobleman  till  the  21st  of  April,  1G48,  when  he  made  his 
escape  from  St.  James's  Palace,  disguised  in  female  attire,  and 
took  refuge  with  his  sister  Mary,  Princess  of  Orange.  Here  he 
joined  a  part  of  the  English  fleet,  which  had  revolted  from  the 
Parliament,  and  was  then  lying  at  Helvoetsluys;  but  although 
at  first  received  on  board  as  an  admiral,  he  soon  after  resigned 
that  post  to  his  brother,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  on  the  arrival  of 
the  latter  from  Paris,  and  returned  to  the  Hague.  When 
Charles,  now  styled  King  by  his  adherents,  came  to  Jersey,  in 
September,  1G49,  he  was  accompanied  by  the  duke,  who 
remained  with  him  during  his  stay  of  three  or  four  months.  He 
then  returned  to  the  Continent,  and  resided  some  time  with  his 
mother  at  Paris. 

'J  Xerer  little  family  »  (says  Clarendon,  who  had  an  interview  with  him  at  Breda,  in 
'•  was   torn  into  so  many  pieces  and  factions.     The  duke  was  very  young,  yet  loved 
intrigues  so  well  thut  he  was  too  much  inclined  to  hearken  to  any  men  who  had  the  confi 
dence  to  make  bold  propositions  to  him.    The  king  had  appointed  him  to  remain  with  the 
fjueen,  and  to  obey  her  in  all  things,  religion  only  exceptcd.    Tho  Lord  Byron  was  lib 


Progress  of  Education.  125 

governor,  ordained  to  be  so  by  his  father,  and  very  fit  for  that  province,  being  a  very  fine 
gentleman,  well  bred  both  in  France  and  Italy,  and  perfectly  versed  in  both  languages,  of 
great  courage  and  fidelity,  and  in  all  subjects  qualified  for  the  trust ;  but  his  being,'  absent 
in  the  king's  service  when  the  Duke  made  his  escape  out  of  England,  and  Sir  John  Berk 
ley  being  then  put  about  him,  all  pains  had  been  taken  to  lessen  his  esteem  of  the  Lord 
Byron  ;  and  Sir  John  Berkley,  knowing  that  he  could  no  longer  remain  governor,  when 
the  Lord  Byron  came  thither,  and  hearing  that  he  was  on  his  journey,  infused  into  the 
Duke's  mind  that  it  was  a  great  lessening  of  his  dignity  at  that  age  (when  he  was  not 
above  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  backward  enough  for  that  age),  to  be  under  a  governor  ; 
and  so,  partly  by  disesteeming  the  person,  and  partly  by  reproaching  the  office,  he  grew 
less  inclined  to  the  person  of  that  good  lord  than  he  should  have  been." — Life.  vol.  i. 
p.  284. 

A  singular  circumstance  now  occurred,  which  well  bespeaks 
the  character  of  James.  Shortly  before  his  meeting  with 
Clarendon,  it  had  been  reported  that  Charles  was  dead ;  upon 
which  the  duke,  looking  upon  himself  as  already  King,  made 
several  journeys  to  take  counsel  with  his  friends ;  and,  upon  the 
falsehood  of  the  intelligence  respecting  Charles  being  discovered, 
James  was  so  childish  that  he  was  rather  delighted  with  the 
journeys  he  had  made,  than  sensible  that  he  had  not  entered 
upon  them  with  reason  enough  ;  observing  that  "they  had  forti 
fied  him  with  a  firm  resolution  never  to  acknowledge  that  he  had 
committed  any  error"  In  the  end  he  was  obliged  to  return  to 
his  mother  at  Paris,  where  he  chiefly  resided  until  he  had 
attained  his  twentieth  year.  He  served  with  reputation  in  both 
the  French  and  Spanish  armies ;  but  his  great  aptitude  was  for 
sea  affairs,  and  after  his  return  to  England  in  1660,  he  for  some 
time  acted  as  Lord  High  Admiral.  His  exertions,  assisted  by 
the  indefatigable  Pepys,  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  raised  the 
fleet  which  afterward  won  the  battle  of  La  Hogue;  as  his 
camp  at  Hounslow  was  the  nursery  for  the  victorious  army  of 
Marlborough.  James  employed  part  of  the  leisure  of  his  retire 
ment  in  writing  an  account  of  his  own  life,  the  original  manu 
script  of  which  extends  to  nine  folio  volumes.  The  manuscript 
was  burnt  by  the  person  to  whom  it  had  been  confided ;  but  a 
digest  of  the  royal  autobiography  had  been  long  before  drawn 
up  by  an  unknown  hand,  apparently  under  the  direction  either 
of  James  or  his  son ;  and  this  digest  being  preserved  among  the 
papers  belonging  to  the  Stuart  family,  which  were  obtained  by 
George  IV.,  when  Regent,  has  been  printed. 

LITERATURE    OF    THE    SEVENTEENTH    CENTURY. 

It  is  now  time  to  glance  at  the  literary  characters  of  this 
period,  reserving  their  personal  characteristics  for  another  por 
tion  of  the  present  volume. 

Foremost  in  the  rank  is  Milton,  though  he  obtained  not  in  his 
life  the  reputation  he  deserved.  Edmund  Waller  was  the  first 
refiner  of  English  poetry,  or  at  least  of  its  rhyme.  Cowley  was 
more  admired  during  his  life  than  Milton,  and  more  celebrated 


126  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

after  his  death.  Sir  John  Donham  had  a  loftiness  and  vigor, 
which  had  scarcely  been  attained  by  any  previous  poet  that 
wrote  in  rhyme.  The  Oceana  of  James  Harrington  was  a  polit 
ical  romance,  well  adapted  to  astonish  when  the  systems  of  im 
aginary  republics  occupied  so  much  attention. 

There  was  also  much  admirable  writing  in  the  English  lan 
guage,  both  under  Charles  I.  and  II., —  by  William  Chilling- 
worth,  in  his  "Religion  of  Protestants,  a  safe  way  to  Salvation;" 
in  Cleveland's  noble  letter  to  Cromwell ;  in  the  famous  histories 
of  Lord  Clarendon,  and  the  pious  eloquence  of  Jeremy  Taylor; 
in  the  abstract  philosophy  of  Dr.  Henry  More ;  in  the  orthodox 
and  learned  divinity  of  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow ;  in  the  Exposition  of 
Bishop  Pearson ;  in  the  still  popular  works  of  Tillotson ;  in  the 
courtly  volumes  of  Sir  William  Temple ;  and  even  in  the  wild 
and  perverted  philosophy  of  Thomas  Hobbes. 

The  reign  of  Charles  II.  has  sometimes  been  considered  the 
Augustan  age  of  English  literature,  though  more  frequently  the 
honor  has  been  adjudged  to  the  eighteenth  century,  as  having 
still  greater  purity  and  simplicity  of  language.  The  authors  of 
this  period  exhibit  much  fine  genius,  though  corrupted  by  the 
bad  taste  to  which  they  were  forced  to  conform,  as  may  be  seen 
in  the  eloquent  and  spirited  works  of  Dryden,  the  comic  talent 
of  Wycherley,  and  the  pathetic  powers  of  Otway.  There  were 
other  authors  of  the  time,  who  wrote  with  good  taste,  as  the 
Marquis  of  Halifax,  and  the  Earls  of  Mulgrave,  Dorset,  and 
Koscommon,  though  their  productions  are  more  limited  in  extent, 
or  slighter  in  the  character  of  their  composition. 

The  few  female  autobiographists  who  have  graced  the  literature  of  England  were  con 
fined  to  the  stirring  times  of  the  Commonwealth,  when  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  by 
acting  upon  the  strongest  and  finest  feelings  of  woman,  developed  her  intellect,  and  forced 
her  upon  active  and  even  perilous  existence.  The  two  most  brilliant  instances  of  this 
charming  gfnre  of  egotism  are  to  be  found  in  the  memoirs  of  the  fantastic  Ducliess  of 
Newcastle,  and  in  those  of  the  heroic  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  both  admirable  illustrations  of 
their  respective  classes  at  the  epoch  in  which  they  flourished  :  the  one  of  the  pure, 
unmixed  aristocracy  of  England;  and  the  other  of  its  gentry,  or  highest  grade  of 
middle  life. 

.Mrs.  Evelyn  was  one  of  the  most  accomplished  women  of  the  court  of  Charles  the 
Second,  and  one  of  the  few  virtuous  women  who  frequented  it.  She  was  a  celebrated  lin- 
guist  and  artist,  and  her  works  in  oil  and  miniature  are  frequently  quoted  with  pride  by 
her  husband. — Lady  Morgan. 

RISE    OP   FREE-SCHOOLS,    OR    CHARITY    SCHOOLS. 

"We  have  already  shown  that  the  endowed  grammar-schools 
were  the  natural  successors  of  the  schools  and  charities  of  the 
Church  before  the  Reformation.  They  contemplated  none  but 
the  most  liberal  education.  Children  were  to  be  brought  up  as 
scholars,  or  to  be  taught  nothing.  The  grammar-schools  were 
the  nurseries  of  the  learned  professions,  and  they  opened  tin- 
way  for  the  highest  honors  of  those  professions  to  the  humblest 
in  the  land. 


Progress  of  Education.  127 

About  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  the  commercial  classes,  who 
had  grown  into  wealth  and  consequent  importance,  began  natu 
rally  to  think  that  schools  in  which  nothing  was  taught  but 
Latin  and  Greek  were  not  altogether  fitted  for  those  who  were 
destined  to  a  mercantile  life.  Uneducated  men  who  had  pushed 
their  way  to  fortune  and  honor  generously  resolved  to  do  some 
thing  for  their  own  class ;  and  thus  we  come  to  see  in  every 
town  not  a  free  grammar-school,  but  a  free-school,  over  whose 
gates  was  generally  set  up  the  effigy  of  a  boy  in  blue  or  green, 
with  an  inscription  betokening  that  by  the  last  will  of  Alderman 
A.  B.  this  school  had  been  founded  for  20  poor  boys,  to  be 
clothed,  and  taught  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic. 

With  a  comparatively  small  population,  these  free-schools 
were  admirable  beginnings  of  the  education  of  the  poorer  classes. 
AVhile  the  grammar-schools  were  making  divines,  lawyers  and 
physicians,  out  of  the  sons  of  the  professional  classes  and  the 
wealthier  tradesmen,  the  free-schools  were  making  clever  handi 
craftsmen  and  thriving  burgesses  out  of  the  sons  of  the  mechan 
ics  and  laborers ;  and  many  a  man  who  had  been  a  charity  boy 
in  his  native  town,  when  he  had  risen  to  competence,  pointed 
with  honor  and  pride  to  the  institution  which  had  made  him 
what  he  was,  and  he  often  loosened  his  purse-strings  to  perpetu 
ate  for  others  the  benefits  which  he  had  himself  enjoyed. 

Thus  we  see  that  what  the  grammar-schools  had  done  for  the 
higher  and  middle  classes,  the  free-schools  did  for  the  lower,  in 
a  different  measure.  They  were  the  prizes  for  the  poor  boy, 
who  had  no  ambition,  perhaps  no  talent,  for  the  struggles  of  the 
scholar ;  they  taught  him  what,  amongst  the  wholly  untaught, 
would  give  him  a  distinction  and  a  preference  in  his  humble 
career, —  and  he  was  unenvied  by  the  less  fortunate,  because  they 
knew  that  there  was  no  absolute  bar  to  their  children  and  their 
kindred  running  the  same  course. 

In  a  few  cases,  we  owe  public-schools  to  some  providential 
deliverance  of  the  founders ;  as  in  the  instance  of  Dame  Alice 
Owen,  who,  in  1G13,  founded  and  endowed  in  St.  John-street- 
road,  London,  a  school  for  30  poor  scholars,  in  memory  of  her 
having  escaped  "braining"  by  a  stray  arrow  upon  the  site,  then 
called  Hermitage  Fields ;  the  arrow  having  passed  through  Dame 
Owen's  high-crowned  hat. 

The  originator  of  this  charity-school  movement  is  by  some 
stated  to  have  been  William  Blake,  a  woolen-draper,  "at  the 
sign  of  the  Golden  Boy,"  Maiden-lane,  Covent-garden,  who 
founded  the  Hospital  at  Highgate,*  called  the  Ladies'  Charity 

*  There  was  already  at  High<rate  a  Grammar  School,  founded  by  Sir  Roger  Cholmeley  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth  ;  the  first  statute  ordering  that  the  schoolmaster  should  "  teach 


128  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

School,  before  1G85,  and  who  purchased  Dorchester  House  for 
that  purpose,  expending  ,">()( >(>/.  in  his  benevolent  project,  Blake 
had  ibr  his  coadjutor  Alderman  Cornish,  who,  in  1685,  was  tried 
and  executed  as  having  been  concerned  in  the  live-house  plot. 
It  is  generally  stated  that  Charity  Schools  were  first  erected  in 
the  parish  of  Aldgate,  and  St.  Margaret,  Westminster ;  and  a 
slab  in  front  of  the  Aldgate  school-house,  adjoining  the  Koyal 
Mint,  bears  an  inscription  to  the  purport  that  it  was  the  first 
Protestant  Charity  School,  and  was  erected  by  voluntary  contri 
butions  in  1093.  Upon  this,  Blake  says:  ''If  it  comes  to  the 
earliest  London  school  for  poor  children,  perhaps  the  Catholics 
take  the  lead ;  for  we  find  that  it  was  part  of  the  tactics  of  the 
Jesuits,  in  the  reign  of  James  II.  to  promote  their  design  of  sub 
verting  the  Protestant  religion  by  infusing  their  Romish  tenets 
into  the  minds  of  the  children  of  the  poor  by  providing  schools 
for  them  in  the  Savoy  and  Westminster."*  Blake  then  describes 
his  scheme  as  a  good  work,  because  it  would,  in  some  measure, 
•'stop  the  mouths  of  the  Papists,"  who  were  wont  to  reproach 
Protestants  with  the  scarcity  of  their  hospitals. 

Blake,  who  styled  himself  "housekeeper"  to  the  school,  wrote 
Silver  Drops,  or  Serious  Thoughts,  in  which  he  advocated  the 
good  cause.  This  is  a  rare  book,  with  four  engravings  (one  a 
view  of  Dorchester  House),  which  were  torn  out  and  used  as 
receipts  for  subscriptions  to  the  charity.  The  Prospectus 
states : 

Ik-ins;  well  informed  that  there  is  a  pious,  pood,  and  eommendable  work  for  maintaining 
near  40  poor  or  fatherless  children,  born  all  at  <>r  near  Highgato.  Hornby,  or  Hamsted,  we, 
whose  names  are  subscribed,  do  engage  or  promise  that  if  the  said  l>oys  are  decently  clothed 
in  blew,  lined  with  yellow  ;  constantly  fed  all  alike  with  good  and  wholesom  diet;  taught 
to  read,  write,  and  cast  accompts,  and  so  put  out  to  trades,  in  order  to  live  another  day. 
then  we  will  give.  etc. 

Blake  then  pleads  for  his  project  by  various  addresses,  which 
he  calls  "charity-school  sticks,"  ostensibly  the  production  of  the 
boys,  but  in  reality  written  by  himself.  But  Blake's  appeals 
failed,  and  having  "fooled  away  his  estate  in  building,"  he  was 
thrown  into  prison  for  debt ;  and  while  there  he  wrote  another 
work,  entitled  "The  State  and  Case  of  a  Design  for  the  better 
Education  of  Thousands  of  Parish  Children  successively  in  the 
vast  Northern  Suburbs  of  London  vindicated,  etc."  Next, 
Blake,  about  1G50,  at  the  funeral  of  his  wife,  thus  exhorted  his 

young  children  their  ABC,  and  other  English  books,  and  to  write,  and  also  in  their  gram 
mar  as  they  should  grow  up  thereto  ;!'  but  the  foundation  dwindling  to  a  mere  charity 
school,  by  the  neglect  of  the  governors,  the  school  was  restored,  and  is  now  in  active  ope 
ration  as  a  Grammar-school  under  a  scheme  of  the  Court  of  Chancery.  The  income  is 
about  777/.,  and  the  School  is  free  to  40  boys,  nominated  by  Governors  from  the  neigh 
borhood. 

•Notes  and  Queries,  No.  210. 


Progress  of  Education.  129 

friends  to  subscribe  to  the  school:  "I  was  brought  up  by  my 
parents  to  learne  Hail  Mary,  Paternoster,  the  Belief,  and  learne 
to  read ;  and  where  I  served  my  apprenticeship  little  more  was 
to  be  found,"  and  he  attributes  it  to  God's  grace  that  he  fell  a 
reading  the  Practice  of  Piety*  etc.  Such  were  the  exertions 
of  Blake,  the  Covent  Garden  philanthropist,  to  whom  must  be 
conceded  the  honor  of  being  the  pioneer  of  our  Charity  Schools. 

Westminster  has,  to  this  day,  four  of  these  schools,  distin 
guished  by  the  color  of  the  clothes  worn  by  the  scholars.  First 
is  St.  Margaret's  Hospital,  established  and  endowed  in  1G33  : 
the  master's  house  bears  a  bust  of  Charles  I.  and  the  royal  arms, 
richly  carved,  colored  and  gilt ;  adjoining  the  school-house  is  a 
quaint  old  flower-garden  ;  the  boys  wear  a  long  green  skirt,  and 
a  red  leather  girdle;  hence  St.  Margaret's  is  known  as  the 
Green  Coat  Hospital ;  the  grace  used  here,  attributed  to  Bishop 
Compton,  is  the  same  as  that  said  in  Christ's  Hospital.  Then 
there  is  the  Westminster  Blue  Coat  School,  instituted  1688  ;  and 
next  Gray  Coat  Hospital,  founded  in  1698,  and  reconstructed  in 
1706,  when  the  school-house  was  built:  the  centre  bears  the 
royal  arms  of  Queen  Anne,  with  the  motto  Semper  Eadem, 
flanked  by  a  male  and  female  figure  in  the  olden  costume  of  the 
children — dark  gray  dresses,  the  girl's  bodice  open  in  front,  and 
corded.  In  1686,  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Somerset,  bequeathed  100/. 
to  support  six  fatherless  boys  in  the  school,  to  be  distinguished 
by  wearing  yellow  caps.  The  fourth  and  last  is  Palmer's  School,! 
the  boys  of  which  wear  Uack  coats. 

A  school  was  commenced  about  this  period  at  Kensington,  by 
a  bequest  in  1645,  to  establish  "  a  free  school  for  poor  men's 
children  to  be  taught  reading  and  arithmetic  ;"  which  was  ex 
tended  to  clothing  and  instructing  boys  and  girls  "  in  all  needful 
learning  and  work,  and  the  principles  of  the  Church,  and  to  dis 
pose  them  to  useful  trades."  Queen  Anne  and  Prince  George 
of  Denmark  contributed  to  the  fund,  and  in  1713  a  new  school- 
house  was  built,  west  of  Kensington  Church,  by  Sir  John  Van- 
brugh  :  this  is  a  fine  specimen  of  brick  work  ;  in  the  front  are 
costumed  statuettes  of  a  charity  boy  with  a  pen  and  scroll,  in 
scribed,  *»  I  was  naked  and  ye  clothed  me  ;"  and  a  charity  girl 
presenting  a  prayer-book  :  in  the  old  school-room  is  a  vellum  list 
of  subscribers  to  the  school  from  1701  to  1750. 

*  The  Practice  of  Piety,  by  Bayly,  Bishop  of  Bangor,  a  book  much  read  by  John 
Bunyan. 

t  Founded  by  the  Rev.  Edward  Palmer,  B.  D.,  who  also  built  alms-houses  and  a 
chapel.  Around  these  sprung  up  cottages  and  small  houses,  which  grew  into  "Palmer's 
Village."  Thirty  years  since,  here  was  an  old  way-side  inn  (the  Prince  of  Orange) ;  the 
cottages  had  gardens,  and  here  was  the  village  green,  upon  which  the  May-pole  was  an 
nually  set  up;  this  rurality  has  now  disappeared,  and  with  it,  from  maps  and  plans,  the 
name  of  "Palmer's  Village." — Curiosities  of  London,  p.  760. 

9 


130  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Among  the  oldest  Charity  Schools  in  the  metropolis  are  those 
of  St.  Clement  Danes,  Strand,  estal>li>hed  in  1700,  on  the  prin 
ciples  then  first  propagated  by  the  Society  for  Promoting  Chris 
tian  Knowledge.  The  School-house  is  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Clare  Market,  formerly  Clement's  Inn  Fields,  when-  theatres  and 
taverns,  and  other  low  haunts  of  dissipation,  held  out  their  baits, 
and  for  neglect  of  Christian  education  lured  many  a  soul  to 
early  ruin. 

Another  of  these  early  institutions  is  the  Ladies'  Charity 
School,  which  was  established  in  1702,  at  King-street,  Snow-hill, 
London,  and  was  there  kept  145  years,  when  it  was  removed  to 
John-street,  Bedford-row.  Mrs.  Thrale  and  Dr.  Johnson  were 
subscribers  to  this  school;  and  Johnson  drew  from  it  his  story 
of  Betty  Broom,  in  the  Idler.  In  the  school  minutes,  17G3,  the 
ladies  of  the  committee  censure  the  schoolmistress  for  listening 
to  the  story  of  the  Cock-lane  Ghost,  and  desire  her  to  "  keep 
her  belief  in  the  article  to  herself."  The  150th  anniversary  of 
this  School  was  celebrated  with  a  public  dinner  at  Stationers' 
Hall,  in  1852. 

EDUCATION    OF    WILLIAM    III. 

Although  William  Henry,  Prince  of  Orange  Nassau,  occu 
pies  a  prominent  place  in  the  history  of  England  and  of  man 
kind,  his  boyhood  and  education,  and  subsequent  encouragement 
of  letters,  may  be  briefly  told.  He  was  born  in  1G50,  and  was 
the  posthumous  son  of  William  II.  of  Orange,  by  Mary,  daughter 
of  Charles  I.,  king  of  England.  lie  was  a  weak  and  sickly 
child;  but  Lord  Macaulay  describes  him  as  largely  endowed  by 
nature  with  the  qualities  of  a  great  ruler,  which  education  devel 
oped  in  no  common  degree.  The  historian  says : 

His  attention  was,  however,  confined  to  those  studies  which  form  strenuous  and  sngrx- 
cious  men  of  business.  Fiomachild  he  listened  with  interest  when  hi-h  questions  of 
finance,  alliance,  and  war  were  discussed.  Of  geometry  he  learned  as  much  as  was  neces 
sary  for  the  construction  of  a  ravelin  or  a  hornwork.  Of  languages,  by  the  help  of  a 
memory  singularly  powerful,  he  learned  as  much  as  was  necessary  to  enable  him  to  com 
prehend  and  answer  without  assistance  everything  that  was  said  to  him,  and  every  letter 
which  he  received.  The  Dutch  was  his  own  tongue.  He  understood  Latin,  Italian,  and 
Spanish.  He  spoke  and  wrote  French,  English,  and  German— inelegantly,  it  is  true,  and 
inexactly,  but  fluently  and  intelligently.  He  was  carefully  instructed  in  the  Calvanistic 
divinity,  to  which  his  family  w:is  attached  :  and  his  theological  opinions  were  even  more 
decided  than  those  of  his  ancestors.  The  tenet  of  predestination  was  the  keystone  of  hb 
religion. 

The  faculties  which  are  necessary  for  the  conduct  of  important  business  ripened  in  him 
at  a  time  of  life  whqn  they  have  scarcely  begun  to  blossom  in  ordinary  men.  Sinco  Octa- 
vius,  the  world  had  seen  no  such  instance  of  precocious  statesmanship.  Skillful  diplomatists 
were  surprised  to  hear  the  weighty  observations  which  at  seventeen  the  prince  made  on 
public  affairs,  and  still  more  surprised  to  sec  the  lad,  in  situations  in  which  he  might  have 
been  expected  to  betray  strong  passion,  preserve  a  composure  as  imperturbable  as  their 
own.  At  eighteen,  he  sat  among  the  fathers  of  the  Commonwealth,  grave,  discreet,  and 
judicious  as  the  oldest  of  them.  At  twenty-one,  in  a  day  of  gloom  and  terror,  he  \\.i- 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  administration.  At  twenty-three,  he  was  renowned  throughout 
Europe  as  a  soldier  and  a  politician. 

Meanwhile,  he  made  little  proficiency  in  fashionable  or  literary  accomplishments.     Ilia 


Progress  of  Education.  131 

manners  were  altogether  blunt  Dutch.  He  was  little  interested  in  letters  or  science.  The 
discoveries  of  Newton  and  Leibnitz,  the  poems  of  Dry  den  and  Boileau,  were  unknown  to 
him.  Dramatic  performances  tired  him.  He  had  indeed  some  talent  for  sarcasm,  smd  not 
seldom  employed,  quite  unconsciously,  a  natural  rhetoric,  quaint  indeed,  but  vigorous 
and  original. — Abridged  from  Macaulay's  JLst.  of  England,  vol.  ii. 

After  William  had  become  King  of  England,  he  was  to  the 
last  a  foreigner  in  speech,  tastes,  and  habits.  He  spoke  our 
language,  but  not  well ;  his  accent  was  foreign,  his  choice  of 
words  was  inelegant,  and  his  vocabulary  seems  to  have  been  no 
larger  than  was  necessary  for  the  transaction  of  business.  Our 
literature  he  was  incapable  of  enjoying  or  understanding.  He 
never  once,  during  his  whole  reign,  showed  himself  at  the  thea 
tre.  The  poets  who  wrote  Pindaric  verses  in  his  praise  com 
plained  that  their  nights  of  sublimity  were  beyond  his  compre 
hension  ;  perhaps  he  did  not  lose  much  by  his  ignorance.* 

It  is  true  that  his  Queen  did  her  best  to  supply  what  was 
wanting.  She  was  English  by  birth,  and  English  also  in  her 
tastes  and  feelings.  She  took  much  pleasure  in  the  lighter  kinds 
of  literature,  and  did  something  toward  bringing  books  into  fash 
ion  among  ladies  of  quality.  She  paid  strict  attention  to  her 
religious  duties ;  and  her  well-bestowed  patronage  of  Doctor 
Tillotson  proves  her  to  have  been  a  true  friend  of  the  church ; 
and  even  the  Jacobite  libelers  of  the  time,  who  respected  noth 
ing  else,  respected  her  name.  Tenison  proved  himself  a  friend 
to  public  education  by  founding  in  St.  James's  parish,  attached 
to  his  chapel,  a  school,  with  schoolmasters  to  teach,  without 
charge,  40  poor  boys  of  the  parish  to  read,  write,  cast  accounts, 
etc.  To  Tenison  also  we  owe  one  of  the  few  public  Libraries 
in  the  metropolis. 

Tenison's  Library,  built  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren,  is  situated  in  Castle-street,  in  the  rear 
of  the  National  Gallery.  It  was  founded  in  1684  by  Dr.  Tenison,  then  Vicar  of  St.  Martin;s- 
in-thc-Fields,  to  supply  what  he  considered  a  deficiency  of  "  any  one  shop  of  a  stationer 
fully  furnished  with  books  of  various  learning  within  the  precinct  of  the  city  and  liberty 
of  that  minster."  Evelyn,  in  his  Diary,  15th  Feb.,  1683-4,  records  :  "  He  (Tenison)  told 
me  there  were  30  or  40  young  men  in  Orders  in  his  parish,  either  governors  to  young  gen 
tlemen,  or  chaplains  to  noblemen,  who  being  reproved  by  him  on  occasion  for  frequenting 
taverns  or  coffee-houses,  told  him  they  would  study  or  employ  their  time  better,  if  they 
had  books.  This  put  the  pious  Doctor  on  his  design/'  The  library  consists  of  about  4000 
volumes;  Lord  Bacon's  Note-book,  and  various  other  of  his  MSS.;  and  an  early  Chaucer 
MS.  The  collection  also  contains  the  rare  books  bequeathed  by  Le  Courayer,  canon  and 
chief  librarian  of  St.  Genevieve,  and  author  of  the  celebrated  Dissertation  on  the  Validity 
of  the  Ordinations  and  the  Succession  of  the  Bishops  of  the  Church  of  England  The 
library  is  open  free  to  "  the  inhabitants  of  Westminster  and  the  neighborhood  thereof." 

The  clergy  in  this  reign  evinced  devotedness  for  the  spread  of 
Christian  Education  by  the  establishment  of  two  excellent  insti 
tutions,  which  flourish  to  the  present  day. 

In  1G98  was  founded  "The  Society  for  Promoting  Christian 

•*  Prior,  who  was  treated  by  William  with  much  kindness,  and  who  was  very  grateful  for 
it,  informs  us  that  the  king  did  not  understand  poetical  eulogy.  The  passage  is  in  a  highly 
curious  manuscript,  the  property  of  Lord  Lansdowne.  —  Macaulcnfs  History  of  England* 
vol.  ii. 


132  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Knowledge,"  by  publishing  religious  works  at  a  cheap  rate, 
approved  of  by  a  committee  of  members  of  the  Church  of  Eng 
land;  the  profits,  together  with  the  legacies  and  donations  to 
the  society's  funds,  being  devoted  to  the  diffusion  of  Christian 
knowledge  and  the  general  education  of  the  poor;  to  making 
gratuitous  grants  of  its  publications  to  parochial  and  other  lend 
ing  libraries,  etc.,  in  England  and  Wales;  and  to  promoting 
Christian  education  abroad  by  supplying  natives  and  settler.-  \\itli 
books,  effecting  translations,  etc.  At  the  close  of  this  reign  (in 
1701)  was  incorporated  "The  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts,"  for  the  religious  instruction  of  his 
Majesty's  subjects  beyond  the  seas,  and  for  the  maintenance  of 
clergymen  in  the  plantations,  colonies,  and  factories  of  Great 
Britain.  "Among  the  founders  and  earliest  supporters  of  this 
Society  were  Arbhbishops  Tenison,  Sharp,  Wake,  Potter; 
Bishops  Compton,  Roebuck,  Burnet,  Beveridge  ;  Dean  Prideaux, 
Robert  Nelson,  William  Melmoth,  John  Evelyn,  etc.  The  Rev. 
John  Wesley  was  originally  a  missionary  of  this  Society,  and  in 
that  character  proceeded  to  America  in  1735,  returning  to  Eng 
land  in  17:38." 

TIIK    REIGN    OF    QUEEN  ANNE. THE  AUGUSTAN   AGK. 

Anne,  the  second  daughter  of  James  Duke  of  York,  by 
bis  wife  Anne  Hyde,  was  born  at  St.  James's,  in  IGGa.  Her 
education  was  intrusted  to  Dr.  Henry  Compton  (subsequently 
Bishop  of  Oxford  and  of  London),  and  she  was  by  him  firmly 
grounded  in  the  principles  of  Protestantism. 

The  reign  of  Queen  Anne  (1702  to  1714)  was  as  distinguished 
for  literature  as  for  arms ;  but,  although  her  administrators 
numbered  among  them  eminent  scholars,  her  own  tastes  and 
opinions  had  little  share  in  calling  forth  the  literary  genius  and 
talent  which  have  led  to  her  reign  being  styled  the  Augustan  Era 
of  English  Literature — on  account  of  its  supposed  resemblance 
in  intellectual  opulence  to  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Augustus. 
This  opinion  has  not  been  entirely  followed  or  confirmed  in  the 
present  day.  Anne's  reign  produced  Addison,  Arbuthnot,  Con- 
greve,  Pope,  Prior,  Steele,  and  Swift — writers  of  a  high  degree 
of  excellence  in  their  particular  walks,  but  scarcely  to  be  com 
pared  with  the  great  poets  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  or  with  a 
few  other  illustrious  names  of  a  succeeding  generation,  such  as 
Milton  and  Dryden.  Yet,  Addison  and  Steele  invented  or  in 
troduced  among  us  the  periodical  essay,  a  species  of  writing 
which  has  never  been  surpassed,  or  on  the  whole  equaled,  by 
any  one  of  their  many  followers.  Who  can  describe  the  light 
ness,  variety,  and  urbanity  of  these  delightful  papers — the  deli- 


Progress  of  Education.  133 

cate  imagination  and  exquisite  humor  of  Addison,  or  the  vivacity, 
warm-heartedness,  and  perfectly  generous  nature  of  Steele  ? 

This  was  the  age  of  the  Examiners,  Spectators,  Tatlers,  and 
Guardians,  which  gave  us  the  first  examples  of  a  style  possess 
ing  all  the  best  qualities  desirable  in  a  vehicle  of  general  amuse 
ment  and  instruction ;  easy  and  familiar  without  coarseness, 
animated  without  extravagance,  polished  without  unnatural 
labor,  and  from  its  flexibility  adapted  to  all  the  varieties  of  the 
gay  and  the  serious. 

Next  to  Addison  is  Arbuthnot,  a  writer  of  sound  English, 
pointed  wit,  and  polished  humor.  Congreve  is  our  most  brilliant 
writer  of  comedy.  Pope  wrote  the  poetry  of  artificial  life  with 
a  perfection  never  since  attained;  and  in  the  hands  of  Swift 
(the  most  powerful  and  original  prose-writer  of  the  period), 
satire  was  carried  to  its  utmost  pitch  and  excellence;*  whilst 
Prior,  in  his  graceful  and  fluent  versification,  reflected  the  lively 
illustration  and  colloquial  humor  of  his  master,  Horace.  Prior's 
patron,  St.  John  Lord  Bolingbroke  (one  of  Anne's  ministry), 
was  so  distinguished  a  scholar,  that  even  his  most  familiar  con 
versations,  it  is  said,  would  bear  printing  without  correction; 
for  he  was  one  of  the  most  brilliant  orators  and  talkers  of  his 
time.  It  is  lamentable  to  add,  that  Bolingbroke  from  early  life 
had  cast  off  belief  in  revelation.  Fortunately,  his  works  are 
now  but  little  read. 

Harley,  Earl  of  Oxford,  the  favorite  minister  of  Queen  Anne, 
was  not  only  a  great  encourager  of  learning,  but  the  greatest 
book-collector  of  his  time;  and  his  curious  books  and  manu 
scripts  form  the  nucleus  of  the  Harleian  Library,  now  one  of  the 
richest  treasures  of  the  British  Museum. 

Among  the  educational  events  of  this  reign  may  be  mentioned 
the  establishment  of  the  Clarendon  Press  at  Oxford,  in  part  from 
the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  Lord  Clarendon's  History  of  the  Re 
bellion,  presented  to  the  University  by  his  son.  The  building, 
by  Sir  John  Vanbrugh,  continued  to  be  used  according  to  its 
original  intention  until  1830,  when  additional  room  being  re 
quired  to  supply  the  increased  demand  for  books,  a  new  build 
ing  was  erected  opposite  the  RadclifFe  Observatory. 

Among  the  free  schools  founded  in  this  reign,  one  in  Aldgate  merits  special  record  from 
its  perfect  adaptation  to  the  requirements  of  the  times.  Such  was  the  school  founded  by 
Sir  John  Cass,  Alderman  of  the  ward  of  Portsoken,  in  the  year  17iO.  Sir  John's  father, 

*  Arbuthnot,  Pope,  and  Swift,  in  17  <  4,  engaged  to  write  together  a  satire  on  the  abuse 
of  human  learning  in  every  branch;  but  the  design  was  not  carried  out,  and  great  was 
the  loss  to  polite  letters.  "  Arbuthnot  was  skilled  in  everything  which  related  to  science  ; 
Pope  was  a  master  of  the  fine  arts  ;  and  1-wii't  excelled  in  the  knowledge  of  the  world.  Wit 
they  had  all  in  equal  measure  ;  and  this  so  lai-ge,  that  no  age  perhaps,  ever  produced  three 
men  on  whom  nature  had  more  bountifully  bestowed  it,  or  art  had  brought  it  to  higher 
perfection.'' 


134  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Thoma>  Caxs.  K  •<.].,  of  Grorc-strect,  Hackney,  had  acquired  an  ample  fortune  as  carpenter 
to  the  Hoyal  Ordnance,  which,  upon  his  iU-ath.  descended  to  hi>  -on  and  only  child,  who 
having  been  educated  in  the  true  prim -ipl« •-  i-f  the  K-taUi>hed  Church,  as  h«'  advanced  in 
life  \sas  one  of  those,  who,  in  the  rei^n  of  Anne.  di<tint;ni-hcd  themselves  for  their  /eal  in 
Bupport  of  her  rights  1-y  contributing  to  turn  the  current  of  thn-v  times,  \\heii  it  b.-came 
the  prevailing  fashion  to  discountenance  orthodoxy  and  uniformity  in  religious  worship, 
of  which  Sir  John  Cass  was  an  exemplary  pattern.  On  the  opening  of  tln-e  schools  in  the 
year  171",  a  sermon  was  preached  in  the  parish  church  <>f  St.  Botolph,  A  Ideate,  by  the  Most 
Kev.  Sir  \Villiain  Dawes,  Archbishop  of  York,  at  which  were  present  no  less  thau  sixteen 
noblemen  and  forty  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  with  the  Lord  Mayor,  Aldermen, 
SherilK  and  Common  Council,  besides  many  other  eminent  persons.  Some  hundreds  ot 

children  of  both  sexes  have  r ived  an  excellent  education  in  this  establishment,  which 

is,  to  this  day,  one  of  the  most  flourishing  of  the  City  schools. 

REIGNS  OF  GEORGE  I.  AND  GEORGE  II. 

George  I.  was  born  at  Hanover,  in  1GGO,  on  the  day  before 
that  on  which  Charles  II.  made  his  entry  into  London,  at  the 
Restoration,  His  education  was  grossly  neglected,  notwithstand 
ing  that  his  mother,  the  Electress  Sophia,  was  the  protector  of  the 
learned  men  of  her  day,  and  spoke  five  languages  with  fluency. 
The  Prince's  inattention  to  study  must  have  been  great  indeed; 
for  he  never  acquired  even  the  language  of  the  people  (the 
English)  over  whom  he  expected  to  reign.  After  his  accession 
to  the  throne,  he  established  professorships  of  Modern  History 
in  the  universities;  and  he  gave  the  library  of  the  Bishop  of  Ely, 
which  cost  the  king  GUUO  guineas,  to  the  University  of  Cam 
bridge,  lie  liberally  patronized  Vertue,  the  engraver;  be 
stowed  the  Laureateship  upon  Nicholas  Howe  ;  and  encouraged 
Dr.  Desaguliers  in  rendering  natural  philosophy  popular,  in  a 
course  of  lectures  at  Hampton  Court.  When  congratulated  by 
a  courtier  on  his  being  sovereign  of  Great  Britain  and  IIanov«  r. 
"  rather,"  said  the  King,  "  congratulate  me  on  having  such  a 
subject  in  one  as  Newton,  and  such  a  subject  in  the  other  as 
Leibnitz." 

In  this  reign  were  educated  Samuel  Johnson,  and  Hume  and 
Robertson,  the  historians.  Of  Johnson's  boyhood  and  school 
days  we  shall  speak  hereafter. 

George  II.,  the  only  son  of  George  I.  and  his  queen  Sophia 
Dorothea,  was  born  at  Hanover,  in  lG.s;J.  lie  was  educated 
under  the  direction  of  his  grandmother,  but  was  nowise  distin 
guished  for  learning,  nor  in  after-life  felt  or  affected  the  least 
admiration  for  art,  science,  or  literature.  In  his  long  reign, 
however,  flourished  in  literature,  Sherlock,  Iloadley,  Seeker, 
Warburton,  Leland,  Thompson,  Akenside,  Home,  Gray,  John 
son,  the  two  Wartons,  Robertson,  Hume,  Fielding  and  Smollt  t. 
not  to  mention  Swift,  Pope  and  Young,  the  survivors  of  a  former 
age.  Yet,  this  and  the  previous  reign  were  a  blank  half  cen 
tury  in  the  annals  of  the  education  of  the  people. 

At  the  close  of  the  reign  of  George  If.   was  opened  THE 


Progress  of  Education.  135 

BRITISH  MUSEUM,  which  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  educa 
tional  institutions  of  the  country. 

The  British  Museum  has  been  the  growth  of  a  century,  between  the  purchase  of  Mon 
tague  House  for  the  collection  of  1753,  and  the  completion  of  the  new  buildings.  The 
Museum  originated  in  a  suggestion  in  the  will  of  Sir  Hans  Sloane  (d.  1753).  offering  his 
collection  to  parliament  for  20,000*.,  it  having  cost  him  50,000/.  The  offer  was  accepted  ; 
und  by  an  Act  (26th  George  II.)  were  purchased  all  Sir  Hans  Sloane's  "library  of  books, 
drawings,  manuscripts,  prints,  medals,  seals,  cameos  and  intaglios,  precious  stones,  agates, 
jaspers,  vessels  of  agate  and  jasper,  crystals,  mathematical  instruments,  pictures,"  etc. 
Ky  the  same  Act  was  bought,  for  lO.OGOi.,  the  Harleian  Library  of  MSS  (about  7600  vol 
umes  of  rolls,  charters,  etc.);  to  which  were  added  the  Cottonian  Library  of  MSS..  and 
the  library  of  Major  Arthur  Edwards.  By  the  same  Act  also  was  raised  by  lottery 
100.000/..out  of  which  the  Sloane  and  Harleian  collections  were  paid  for:  10.250/.  to  Lord 
Halifax  for  Montague  House,  and  12,873/.  for  its  repairs  ;  a  fund  being  set  apart  for  the  pay 
ment  of  taxes  and  salaries  of  officers.  Trustees  were  elected  from  persons  of  rank, 
station,  and  literary  attainments ;  and  the  institution  was  named  THE  BRITISH  MUSEUM. 
To  Montacuc  House  were  removed  the  Harleian  collection  of  MSS.  in  1755;  other  collec 
tions  in  1756  ;  and  the  Museum  was  opened  to  the  public  January  15,  1759. 

EDUCATION    OF    GEORGE    III. 

How  various  the  fortunes  under  which  the  royal  youth  of 
England  have  been  reared  for  her  rule  and  government  may  be 
seen  by  a  glance  through  the  preceding  pages.  The  retrospect 
will  be  interesting  and  instructive,  in  showing  the  storm  and 
sunshine,  the  promise  and  blight,  amid  which  have  been  reared 
the  princes  of 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England, 
This  nurse,  this  teeming  womb  of  royal  Kings, 
Feared  by  their  breed,  and  famous  by  their  birth. 

Skakspeare,  Richard  II. 

As  we  approach  the  close  of  the  long  line,  such  violence  and 
trouble  as  beset  the  infancy  of  our  earliest  sovereigns  is  no  lon 
ger  to  be  recorded  of  the  lives  of  their  successors :  we  have  no 
linger  to  chronicle  how  the  heir  to  the  crown  drew  his  first 
lessons,  safe  only  in  the  strength  of  the  fortress ;  or  how  the 
course  of  his  early  studies  was  broken  by  shifting  from  castle  to 
castle,  as  the  only  security  amidst  the  fierce  contentions  of  civil 
war.  Such  chances  of  evil  have  long  ceased  to  beset  the  infancy 
of  our  kings ;  but  they  have  been  succeeded  by  troubles  of  a 
milder  kind — though  of  almost  equal  ill-promise  for  the  welfare  of 
princes — in  the  political  difficulties  which  have  too  often  attended 
their  early  lives,  and  beset  their  training  for  the  kingly  office. 
The  boyhood  and  youth  of  George  III.  were  clouded  with  such 
disadvantages,  which,  however,  the  strong  natural  sense  of  the 
prince,  in  great  measure,  enabled  him  to  overcome.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  defects  of  his  own  training,  it  must  be  ac 
knowledged  that  the  King  was — what  many  influential  persons  of 
his  time  were  not — "  an  avowed  friend  to  the  diffusion  of  educa 
tion,  and  certainly  was  not  afraid  that  his  subjects  should  be 
made  either  more  difficult  to  govern,  or  worse  in  any  other 
respect,  by  all  classes  and  every  individual  of  them  being  taught 


136  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

to  read  and  to  write."  His  reign  is  perhaps  to  be  placed  above 
every  other  of  the  same  length  in  modern  history,  for  the  ac 
cessions  to  almost  every  department  of  knowledge  by  which  it 
wa-  signalized  ;  and  even  the  latter  half  of  the  period,  notwith 
standing  the  wars  and  political  confusion  by  which  it  was  dis 
turbed,  was  at  least  as  distinguished  for  the  busy  and  successful 
cultivation  of  science  and  literature,  as  the  quieter  time  that 
preceded. 

George  Willliam  Frederick,  the  eldest  son  of  Frederick  Lew 
is,  Prince  of  Wales,  and  Augusta,  daughter  of  Frederick  II., 
Duke  of  Saxe-Gotha,  was  born  in  1738,  at  Norfolk  House,  St. 
James's-square.*  The  nation  were  elated  at  the  birth  of  the 
heir  presumptive  to  the  throne ;  and  on  the  first  anniversary  of 
his  birthday,  he  was  congratulated  by  a  company  of  GO  Lillipu 
tian  soldiers,  all  under  twelve  years  of  age,  who  were  received 
by  the  infant  prince  wearing  an  uniform,  hat  and  feather;  and 
next  year  he  was  present  at  a  masque  written  by  Thompson  and 
Mallet,  to  commemorate  the  accession  of  his  family  to  the  Britisli 
throne.  At  the  age  of  six,  the  prince  wa<  placed  under  the  care 
of  Dr.  Francis  Ayscough,  afterward  Bishop  of  Bristol,  who, 
writing  to  the  pious  Dr.  Doddridge,  says :  "I  thank  God  I  have 
one  great  encouragement  to  quicken  me  in  my  duty,  which  is  the 
good  disposition  of  the  children  intrusted  to  me;  as  an  instance, 
I  must  tell  you  that  Prince  George  (to  his  honor  and  my  shame) 
had  learnt  several  pages  in  your  book  of  verses,  without  any  di 
rection  from  me." 

The  Prince  of  Wales  was  a  liberal  patron  of  men  of  letters. 
He  paid  great  attention  to  the  education  of  his  son,  for  whose 
use  he  commissioned  Dr.  Freeman  to  write  the  History  of  the 
English  Tongue.  On  the  first  appearance  of  the  Rambler,  by 
Dr.  Johnson,  he  also  sought  out  the  author  that  he  might  be 
friend  him ;  the  Prince  also  greatly  encouraged  Vertue,  the  en 
graver  ;  and  upon  one  occasion  he  sent  the  poet  Glover  a  bank 
note  of  500/.  to  console  him  in  his  affliction. 

To  accustom  the  young  Prince  and  his  brothers  to  rhetoric, 
plays  were  got  up  at  Leicester  House ;  when  Prince  George 
filled  the  character  of  Portius,  in  Cato,  and  recited  the  pro 
logue.  The  instruction  of  the  young  actors  was  intrusted  to 
Quin,  the  comedian,  who,  many  years  afterward,  on  hearing  of 
the  graceful  manner  in  which  George  III.  delivered  his  first 
speech  from  the  throne,  said,  with  delight,  "  Aye !  'twas  I  that 
taught  the  boy  to  speak."  With  Lord  Ilarcourt  and  Lord 
\\  aldegrave  successively  as  governors,  and  Dr.  Hayter,  bishop 

•The  room  of  the  old  mansion  in  the  rear  of  the  present  Norfolk  Hoi^c  is  preserved  ; 
and  the  bed  in  which  the  prince  was  born  is  at  Work>oj>,  Notts. 


Progress  of  Education.  137 

of  Norwich,  succeeded  by  Dr.  John  Thomas,  Bishop  of  Peter 
borough,  as  preceptors,  and  under  the  more  influential  superin 
tendence  of  Lord  Bute,  the  Prince  progressed  in  his  studies,  but 
was  kept  in  great  privacy  by  his  mother,  whose  notions  were  cer 
tainly  very  narrow.  One  of  her  complaints  against  the  Bishop 
of  Norwich  was  that  "he  insisted  upon  teaching  the  Princes  logic, 
which,  as  she  was  told,  was  a  very  old  study  for  children  of  their 
age,  not  to  say  of  their  condition."  From  Lord  Bute  the  Prince 
derived  his  chief  knowledge  of  the  constitution ;  Bute  actually 
drawing  his  subjects  for  conversation  from  the  Commentaries 
of  Blackstonc,  the  author  permitting  him  to  see  that  work  in 
manuscript,  and  even  to  submit  it  to  be  read  by  the  Prince.  He 
grew  up  to  be  perfectly  master  of  all  the  proprieties  of  his 
station ;  and  the  decorum  of  his  private  conduct  gave  a  higher 
tone  to  public  manners,  and  made  the  domestic  virtues  fashion 
able  even  in  circles  where  they  were  most  apt  to  be  treated  with 
neglect.  He  was  well  acquainted  with  the  language,  habits,  and 
institutions  of  the  English  people.  "  Born  and  educated  in  this 
country,"  said  his  majesty,  in  his  opening  speech  to  the  Parliament, 
"•  I  glory  in  the  name  of  Briton,  and  I  hold  the  civil  and  religious 
rights  of  my  people  equally  dear  with  the  most  valuable  preroga 
tive  of  my  crown."  And  never,  throughout  the  course  of  a  long 
and  anxious  reign  of  sixty  years,  did  his  actions  as  a  man  or  a 
prince  contradict  the  boast.  He  was  profoundly  yet  unaffectedly 
religious;  his  love  of  Christianity  strongly  displaying  itself  even 
in  his  sixteenth  year,  when  he  distributed  within  his  own  circle 
one  hundred  copies  of  Dr.  Leland's  View  of  deistical  writers, 
written  in  contravention  of  their  pernicious  writings.  George 
III.  was  likewise  a  lover  of  music,  his  favorite  composer  being 
Handel,  and  we  have  seen  in  the  King's  handwriting  lengthy 
programmes  of  chamber  concerts  performed  in  Windsor  Castle. 
He  liberally  patronized  Cook,  Byron,  and  Wallis,  the  navigators  ; 
Herschel,  the  astronomer  ;  and  West,  the  historical  painter ;  and 
he  took  a  lively  interest  in  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Academy 
of  Arts.  He  collected  a  library  of  80,000  volumes,  the  most 
complete  ever  formed  by  a  single  individual :  it  is  now  in  the 
British  Museum,  and  known  as  "  the  King's  Library."  His 
Majesty  collected  this  library  at  Buckingham  House.  Dr. 
Johnson,  by  permission  of  the  librarian,  frequently  consulted 
books. 

'•It  is  curious  that. the  Tloyal  collector  (George  III.)  and  his  venorable  librarian  (Mr. 
Barnard)  should  have  survived  almost  sixty  years  after  commencing  the  formation  of  this, 
the  most  complete  private  library  in  Europe,  steadily  appropriating  20001.  p'T  annum  to 
this  object,  and  adhering  with  scrupulous  attention  to  the  instructions  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
contained  in  the  admirable  letter  printed  by  order  of  the  House  of  Commons." — Quarterly 
Review,  June,  18*26. 


138  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

To  Johnson,  Sheridan,  Beattic,  and  Blair,  George  III.  granted 
pensions;  he  especially  admired  Dr.  Johnson,  who  has  recorded 
a  long  conversation  with  his  majesty  ;  and  after  the  interview, 
tlif  Doctor  observed  to  the  royal  librarian,  "  Sir,  they  may  talk 
of  the  King  as  they  will,  he  is  the  finest  gentleman  I  have  ever 
seen."  lie  subsequently  declared  that  "the  King's  manners 
were  those  of  as  fine  a  gentleman  as  one  might  suppose  Louis 
the  Fourteenth  or  Charles  the  Second  to  have  been." 

SUNDAY     SCHOOLS    ESTABLISHED. 

One  of  the  brightest  ornaments  of  our  Church  has  observed, 
with  equal  eloquence  and  truth,  "  The  mainstay  of  religious  edu 
cation  is  to  be  found  in  our  Sunday  Schools — the  most  earnest, 
the  most  devoted,  the  most  pious  of  our  several  congregations, 
are  accustomed,  with  meritorious  zeal,  to  dedicate  themselves  to 
this  great  work."*  The  founder  of  these  invaluable  institutions 
was  Mr.  Robert  Raikes,  the  proprietor  and  editor  of  the  Glou 
cester  Journal.  His  attention  was  first  drawn  to  the  wretched 
state  of  the  prisoners  in  the  bridewell  at  Gloucester,  for  want  of 
religious  and  moral  instruction  ;  and  for  this  purpose,  whenever 
he  found  one  among  the  prisoners  that  was  able  to  read,  he  set 
him  to  instruct  his  fellow-prisoners,  and  rewarded  him  for  his 
trouble.  Mr.  Raikes  next  set  to  work  in  other  quarters,  and 
in  1783  wrote  in  his  newspaper — "  Some  of  the  clergy  in  differ 
ent  parts  of  this  county,  bent  upon  attempting  a  reform  among 
the  children  of  the  lower  class,  are  establishing  Sunday  Schools 
for  rendering  the  Lord's  Day  subservient  to  the  ends  of  instruc 
tion,  which  has  hitherto  been  prostituted  to  bad  purposes."  At 
this  time,  the  streets  were  full  of  noise  and  disturbance  every 
Sunday;  and  the  churches  were  unfrequented  by  the  poorer  sort 
of  children,  and  very  ill  attended  by  their  parents.  To  them 
Mr.  Raikes  proposed  that  their  children  should  meet  him  at  the 
early  service  performed  in  Gloucester  Cathedral  on  a  Sunday 
morning.  The  numbers  at  first  were  few,  but  their  increase  was 
rapid  ;  and  Mr.  Raikes  soon  found  himself  surrounded  by  sucli  a 
set  of  little  ragamuffins  as  would  have  disgusted  teachers  less 
zealous  than  the  founder  of  Sunday  Schools.  The  children  soon 
began  to  look  upon  him  with  respect  and  affection,  and  were 
readily  drilled  into  a  decent  observance  of  the  outward  ceremo 
nies  of  religion.  To  prevent  their  running  about  the  streets  of 
the  city  after  and  between  the  services,  masters  and  mistresses 
were  engaged,  by  means  of  subscriptions,  for  a  large  number  of 
children  of  both  sexes  to  be  educated  in  the  principles  of  Chris 
tianity.  From  this  hour  the  system  of  Sunday  Schools  has  gone 

•The  Hcv.  Dr.  Ilook,  Vicar  of  Leeds,  in  his  Letter  to  the  BL<hop  of  St.  David's. 


Progress  of  Education.  139 

on  most  surely  and  rapidly  developing,  until  it  would  be  difficult 
to  overrate  the  positive  benefits  which  have  been  derived  from 
its  extension,  until  the  present  (1858)  number  of  scholars  has 
reached  two  millions  and  a  half. 

THE    MONITORIAL    SYSTEM    OF    BELL    AND    LANCASTER. 

To  each  of  these  philanthropists  (as  in  most  similar  claims) 
is  attributed,  by  different  authorities,  the  merit  of  being  founder 
of  the  system  which  bears  the  name  of  the  latter;  but  to  Lan 
caster  is  due  the  great  public  attention  first  bestowed  on  the  sub 
ject,  and,  we  think,  to  Dr.  Bell  the  first  adoption  of  its  principles. 
Whilst  superintendent  of  the  Military,  Orphan  Asylum  at 
Madras,  in  1791,  Dr.  Bell  one  day  observed  a  boy,  belonging 
to  a  Malabar  school,  writing  in  the  sand ;  thinking  that  method 
of  writing  very  convenient,  both  as  regards  cheapness  and  facility, 
he  introduced  it  in  the  school  of  the  asylum,  and  as  the  usher 
refused  to  teach  by  that  method,  he  employed  one  of  the  cleverest 
boys  to  teach  the  rest.  The  experiment  was  so  successful  that 
he  extended  it  to  the  other  branches  of  instruction,  and  soon 
organized  the  whole  school  under  boy-teachers,  who  were  them 
selves  instructed  by  the  Doctor.  On  his  return  to  England  he 
published  a  Report  of  the  Madras  Orphan  Asylum,  in  which  he 
particularly  pointed  out  the  new  mode  of  school  organization,  as 
more  efficient  than  the  old. 

In  the  following  year,  1798,  Dr.  Bell  introduced  the  system 
into  the  school  of  St.  Botolph,  Aldgate, — then  at  Kendal ;  and 
next  he  attempted,  but  with  small  success,  to  obtain  its  adoption 
in  Edinburgh.  Settling  soon  after,  as  rector  of  Swanage,  in 
Dorsetshire,  he  was  secluded  from  the  world  for  some  years  ;  yet 
he  retained  his  strong  opinion  of  the  value  of  the  new  system 
of  education,  and  had  the  school  at  Swanage  conducted  on  that 
plan. 

Meanwhile,  Joseph  Lancaster,  son  of  a  Chelsea  pensioner  in 
the  Borough-road,  London,  opened  a  school  in  his  father's  house, 
in  1798,  at  the  early  age  of  eighteen.  He  had  been  usher  in 
schools,  and  had  made  certain  improvements  in  tuition ;  and  a 
pamphlet  by  Dr.  Bell  having  fallen  in  his  way,  Lancaster 
adopted  the  Madras  system,  with  alterations.  In  1802  he 
brought  his  school  into  a  perfect  state  of  organization,  and  found 
himself  as  able  to  teach  250  boys,  with  the  aid  of  the  senior 
boys  as  teachers,  as  before  to  teach  80.  Lancaster  was  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  and  received  much  encourage 
ment  and  assistance  from  them.  His  enthusiasm  and  benevo 
lence  led  him  to  conceive  the  practicability  of  bringing  all  the 
children  of  the  poor  under  education  by  the  new  system.  He 


140  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

published  pamphlets  recommending  the  plan,  and  in  one  of  them 
ascribes  the  chief  merit  to  Dr.  Bell,  whom  he  afterward  visited 
at  Swan  age.  1  1  is  own  school  Lam-aster  made  free,  and  obtained 
subscriptions  from  friends  of  education  for  its  support.  At 
length  he  was  admitted  to  an  interview  with  George  III.  at 
Weymouth,  in  1805,  and  his  majesty  being  charmed  with  the 
order  and  efficiency  of  his  schools,  subscribed  to  the  fund  100/. 
a-yrar,  the  Queen  50/.,  and  the  princesses  251.  each,  to  be  em 
ployed  in  the  extension  of  the  Lancasterian  system,  to  promote 
which  a  Society  was  formed  under  the  patronage  of  the  King.* 
Such  was  the  origin  of  the  .British  and  Foreign  School  Society, 
originally  "the  Royal  Lancasterian  Institution  for  promoting  the 
Education  of  the  Children  of  the  Poor."t 

Dr.  Bell's  method  in  process  of  time  was  adopted  in  the  Lam 
beth  schools  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury;  and  in  the 
Royal  Military  School  at  Chelsea  ;  whilst  numerous  schools 
sprung  into  existence  under  what  is  known  to  this  day  as  the 
Madras  System.  The  distinctive  features  of  Bell's  National 
Schools,  and  Lancaster's  British  and  Foreign  School  systems 
were,  that  the  religious  instruction  in  the  former  was  according 
to  the  formularies  of  the  Established  Church  ;  whilst  the  latter 
represented  the  Dissenting  interests,  admitting  the  reception  of 
the  Bible  as  the  foundation  of  all  instruction,  but  without  note 
or  comment.  This  still  remains  the  essential  difference  between 
the  two  societies,  and  the  schools  conducted  on  their  principles. 
To  these  systems  have  since  been  added  Normal  and  Model 
Schools  ;  and  for  the  girls  in  these  schools  instruction  in  do 
mestic  economy  and  the  duties  of  servants. 

In  1808,  Dr.  Bell  endeavored  to  induce  the  Government  to 
e>tabli>h  upon  his  plans  "A  National  Board"  of  Education, 
with  schools  placed  under  the  management  of  the  parochial 
clergy.  In  this  he  failed  ;  but  by  aid  of  friends  of  the  Estab 
lished  Church,  and  under  the  patronage  of  the  bishops  and  clergy, 
the  National  Society  was  eventually  formed  in  1811  .J 

THE    PRIMER    AND    THE    HORNBOOK. 

The  earliest  printed  book  used  in  the  tuition  of  youth  was  the 
Primer  (Primaritu,  Latin),  a  small  prayer-book  in  which  eliil- 


•  The  noWo  -,vi.-h  of  fieorge  III.  —  "that  the  d:iv  mi-ht  come  when  evcrv  poor  child 
in  his  dominions  would  be  able  to  rend  the  HiMe  "-  doubtless  preatly  assisted  bv  tin- 
oilier  if  >n  of  Uoval  Authority  this  new  system  of  teaching.  as  well  as  the  liible  Society 
<  -rab.ishcd  in  1804. 

t  Latiea.-ter  nvM-ned  his  direction  of  tho  school  in  1808.     lie  died  in  1838,  having  been 
::<>!  in  his  latter  days  solely  by  ail  annuity  purchased  for  him   bv  a  low  old  and 
attached  friends. 

I  Dr.  Bell  died  in  1832,  leaving  the  princely  gum  of  132.000/.  for  the  encouragement  of 
literature  and  the  advancement  of  education. 


Progress  of  Education.  141 

dren  were  taught  to  read — and  the  Romish  book  of  devotions 
in  the  monastic  schools.  At  the  Reformation,  the  Primer  was 
retained,  but  the  requisite  changes  were  made.  In  1545,  Henry 
VIII.  ordered  to  be  printed  an  English  "  form  of  Public  Prayer,1' 
entitled  the  Primer,  said  to  be  "  set  furth  by  the  Kinge's  rnajes- 
tie  and  his  clergie,  to  be  taught,  lerned,  and  red."  A  copy  of 
this  rare  book  is  extant:  it  was  once  the  property  of  Sir  John 
Clark,  priest  of  the  chapel  of  Leedsbridge,  and  founder  of  the 
school.  This  appears  from  the  following  autograph  note  in 
the  Calendar :  "  This  day  I  began  the  schole  at  Leeds,  July  4, 
15G3." 

It  would  be  hard  to  say  when  the  contents  of  the  Primer  were 
changed  from  sacred  to  secular:  the  change  was  probably  very 
gradual,  more  especially  as  the  Primers  printed  to  this  day  con 
tain  occasional  prayers — the  good  seed  which  cannot  be  sown 
too  early  in  the  mind  of  childhood.  The  accounts  of  the  gram 
mar-schools  of  the  sixteenth  century  contain  much  interesting 
evidence  of  the  value  attached  to  school-books,  by  the  care 
which  is  directed  to  be  taken  of  them.  Thus,  in  the  corporation 
records  of  Boston,  in  Lincolnshire,  in  1578,  it  was  agreed  that 
"  a  Dictionarye  shall  be  bought  for  the  scollers  of  the  Free 
Scoole ;  and  the  same  boke  to  be  tyed  in  a  cheque,  and  set  upon 
a  desk  in  the  scoole,  whereunto  any  scoller  may  have  accesse  as 
occasion  shall  serve."  There  are  later  entries  of  the  Corpora 
tion  purchasing  dictionaries  for  the  use  of  the  school;  besides 
presents  of  dictionaries,  lexicons,  grammars,  folio  English  Bibles, 
etc. — (Thompso?i's  History  of  Hoston.) 

Another  "  dumb  teacher "  was  the  Hornbook,  of  which  a 
specimen  exists,  in  black-letter,  of  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
It  appears  to  be  at  least  as  ancient  as  1570,  is  mounted  on  wood, 
and  protected  with  transparent  horn. 

"  The  letters  may  be  read,  through  the  horn, 
That  make  the  story  perfect." — Btn  Jonson. 

There  is  a  large  cross,  the  criss-cross,  and  then  the  alphabet 
in  large  and  small  letters.  The  vowels  follow  next,  and  their 
combinations  with  the  consonants ;  and  the  whole  is  concluded 
with  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Roman  numerals.  The  Arabic 
numerals  are  not  given.  Shakspeare  thus  refers  to  the  cross- 
row  of  the  Horn-book : 

"  He  hearkens  after  prophecies  and  dreams  ; 
And  from  the  cross- row  plucks  the  letter  G  ; 
And   ays.  a  wizard  told  him  that  by  G 
His  issue  disinherited  should  be." — Richard  III. 

Again,  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  act  v.  scene  1,  Moth,  the  page 
to  Armado,  says,  in  describing  Holofernes  the  schoolmaster, 
"He  teaches  boys  the  Hornbook." 


142  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Cotgrave  ha?,  "La  Croix  de  par  Dteu.  the  Christ's-cross-rowc, 
or  hornc-bookc,  wherein  a  child  Irarncs  it;"  and  Florio,  ed.  1011, 
p.  !'•'), 4>  Centuruofa,  a  ehildfs  horne-booke  hanging  at  his  girdle." 

In  the  collection  of  Sir  Thomas  Phillipps,  at  Middlehill,  arc 
two  genuine  Horn-books  of  the  reigns  of  Charles  I.  and  II. 
Locke,  in  his  Thoughts  on  ]•;<!  neat  inn,  >praks  of  the  "ordinary 
road  of  the  Hornbook  and  Primer,"  and  directs  that  "the  Lord's 
Prayer,  the  Creed,  and  the  Ten  Commandments  he  should  learn 
by  heart,  not  by  reading  them  himself  in  his  Primer,  but  by 
somebody's  repeating  them  before  he  can  read." 

Shenstone,  who  was  taught  to  read  at  a  dame-school,  near 
Halesowen,  in  Shropshire,  in  his  delightfully  quaint  poem  of  the 
Schoolmistress,  commemorating  his  venerable  preceptress,  thus 
records  the  use  of  the  Hornbook: 

"  Lo  :  now  with  state  she  utters  her  command  ; 
Kftsoons  the  urchins  to  their  tasks  repair; 
Their  books  of  stature  small  they  take  in  hand, 
Which  with  pellucid  horn  secured  are 
To  save  from  finger  wet  the  letters  fair." 

Cowper  thus  describes  the  Hornbook  of  his  time: 

•   Nt-atly  secured  from  being  soiled  or  torn 
Hencath  a  pane  of  thin  translucent  horn, 
A  book  (to  please  us  at  a  tender  aire 
"I  is  called  a  book,  though  but  a  single  page) 
Presents  the  jinuer  the  Saviour  deigned  to  teach, 
Which  children  use,  and  parsons — when  they  preach." 

Tirocinium^  or  a  Review  of  Schools,  1784. 

We  have  somewhere  read  a  story  of  a  mother  tempting  her 
son  along  the  cross-row  by  giving  him  an  apple  for  each  letter  he 
learnt.  This  brings  us  to  the  gingerbread  alphabet  of  our  own 
time,  which  appears  to  have  been  common  a  century  and  a  half 
since : 

"To  master  John  the  English  maid 
A  Hornbook  gives  of  gingerbread  ; 
And,  that  the  child  may  learn  the  better, 
As  he  can  name,  he  eats  the  letter/' — Prior. 

An  anecdote  illustrative  of  Lord  Erskine's  readiness  is  related 
— that,  when  asked  by  a  judge  if  a  single  sheet  could  be  called  a 
book,  he  replied,  "The  common  Hornbook,  my  lord." 


Progress  of  Education. 


143 


a  c     o a 
a  ^bc  l>i  'bo 


a  e  i  o  a 
ab  tb  ib  oh  Ti 


ad  ed.  id  od 

In  the  Nanxc.of 


\,ery  ^vc      att 

Tvalloyed   "be 
thy  King  doTn  conie^  thy 
aone  on  lEcath,  as  'it:  is 
biye  us  ibis  clay   our 
j,  and.  forgive,  as  O-JT 
forg-Tye  tl\em 
fbi'at   ttef  jpafsVagciih'ft  T.IS 

us  not  inrm  Tempt  atiouj  ba 
SeJiver  us  from.ElvaJ 


HORNBOOK   OP  THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

In  Specimens  of  West  Country  Dialect,  the  use  of  the  Horn 
book  is  thus  shown: 

<;  Commether,  Billy  Chubb,  an  breng  the  hornen  book-  Gee  ma  the  Tester  in  tha  -win- 
dor,  you  Pal  Came  .' — what !  be  a  sleepid— I'll  wake  ye.  Now,  Billy,  there's  a  good  bway  ! 
Ston  still  there,  and  mind  what  I  da  za  to  ye,  .an  whaur  I  da  point.  Now  ;  cris-cross,  girt  a, 
little  a — b— c— d.  That's  right,  Billy  ;  you'll  zoon  lorn  the  criss-cross-lain — you'll  zoon 
auvergit  Bobby  Jiffry — you'll  zoon  be  a scholard.  A's  a  pirty  chubby  bway — Lord  love'n  !" 

John  Britton,  who  was  born  in  the  parish  of  Kington  St. 
Michael's,  Wilts,  in  1771,  tells  us,  in  his  Autobiography,  that  he 
was  placed  with  a  schoolmistress :  "here,"  he  writes,  "I  learnt 
'the  Christ-cross-row'  from  a  Hornbook,  on  which  were  the 
alphabet  in  large  and  small  letters,  and  the  nine  figures  in  Ro- 


144  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

man  and  Arabic  numerals.  The  Hornbook  is  now  a  rarity." 
Such  a  Hornbook  i<  engraved  on  the  preceding  page.  It  \v.-i-  met 
with  in  the  year  18f>0,  among  the  old  stock  of  a  bookseller  at  Peter 
borough,  in  Lincolnshire,  and  is  thus  described:  Its  dimensions 
are  9  by  5  inches.  The  alphabet,  etc.,  are  printed  upon  whit»> 
paper,  which  is  laid  upon  a  thin  piece  of  oak,  and  is  covered  with 
a  sheet  of  horn,  secured  in  its  place  by  eight  tacks,  driven 
through  a  border  or  mounting  of  brass;  the  object  of  this  horn- 
covering  being  to  keep  the  "  book,"  or  rather  leaf,  unsoiled.  The 
first  line  is  a  cross-row;  so  named,  says  Johnson,  ubecau>e  ;i 
cross  is  placed  at  the  beginning,  to  show  that  the  end  of  learning 
is  piety." 

The  Hornbook  was  not  always  mounted  on  a  board ;  many 
were  pasted  on  the  back  of  the  horn  only,  like  one  used  five-and- 
forty  years  ago  by  a  friend,  when  a  boy  at  Bristol. 

Such  was  the  rudeness  of  the  "dumb  teacher"  formerly  em 
ployed  at  the  dame-school,  and  elsewhere.  It  was,  in  all  proba 
bility,  superseded  by  Dr.  Bell's  sand-tray,  upon  which  the 
children  traced  their  own  letters.  Next  came  the  "Battledore" 
and  "  Reading-made-Easy ;"  though  the  Spelling-book  is  con 
siderably  older  than  either.  The  Battledore,  by  the  way,  re 
minds  us  of  a  strategy  of  tuition  mentioned  by  Locke:  "By 
pasting  the  vowels  and  consonants  on  the  sides  of  four  dice,  he 
has  made  this  a  play  for  his  children,  whereby  his  eldest  &on  in 
coats  has  played  himself  into  spelling." 

PROGRESS     OF     EDUCATION    IN    THE     REIGNS    OF    GEORGE    IV. 
AND    WILLIAM    IV. 

There  is  little  to  interest  the  reader  in  the  early  personal  his 
tories  of  these  sovereigns.  George  the  Fourth,  the  eldest  son  of 
George  the  Third  and  Queen  Charlotte,  was  born  at  Bucking 
ham  IIoiiM',  in  17G2.  At  the  age  of  three  years  he  received  an 
address  from  the  Society  of  Ancient  Britons,  and  was  made  a 
Knight  of  the  Garter.  In  a  few  months  after,  he  was  appointed 
by  a  King's  letter,  addressed  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  Captain-Gen 
eral  of  the  Honorable  Artillery  Company  of  the  City  of  London. 
He  learned  his  nursery  tasks  at  Kew-house,  or  the  old  palace 
at  Kew,  where  the  royal  family  lived,  as  Miss  Burney  says, 
"running  about  from  one  end  of  the  house  to  the  other,  without 
precaution  or  care."  The  prince's  first  governor  was  the  Earl 
of  Holdernesse;  Dr.  Markham,  Bishop  of  Chester  (afterward 
Archbishop  of  York),  was  the  prince's  preceptor;  and  Mr.  Cyril 
Jackson,  Mib-preceptor.  These  gentlemen,  however,  suddenly 
ri->igned  tlu-ir  offices,  it  is  believed  from  their  having  found  some 
political  works,  which  they  considered  objectionable,  put  into 


Progress  of  Education.  145 

the  hands  of  their  pupil  by  direction  of  the  King.  His  next 
preceptor  was  Dr.  Hurd,  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry, 
afterward  of  Worcester;  with  the  Rev.  William  Arnold  as  sub- 
preceptor;  both  these  tutors  being  Cambridge  men.  The  prince 
was  kept  by  his  father  in  a  state  of  unmitigated  pupilage  till  he 
was  nearly  eighteen,  soon  after  which  he  appeared  in  public, 
and  fell  into  dissolute  habits,  which  deeply  embittered  his  after 
life. 

George  the  Fourth  affected  patronage  of  painting  and  archi 
tecture  ;  the  results  of  the  latter  are  best  seen  in  the  highly  em 
bellished  western  quarter  of  London.  His  encouragement  of 
letters  and  learned  men  was  narrow  and  partisan ;  he  was  the 
first  patron  of  the  Literary  Fund,  to  which  he  contributed  up 
ward  of  5000/.;  in  the  Society's  armorial  bearings  is  "  the  Prince 
of  Wales's  plume."  By  his  bounty,  the  Latin  manuscript  of 
Milton,  discovered  in  the  State  Paper  Office  in  1823,  was  edited, 
and  a  translation  published.  The  King  also  chartered,  in  1826, 
the  Royal  Society  of  Literature,  and  contributed  from  the  Privy 
Purse  1100  guineas  a-year  to  its  funds;  though  it  should  be 
added,  that  he  was  committed  to  this  large  annual  subscription 
by  a  misconception  of  Dr.  Burgess,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  the 
King  intending  a  donation  of  1000  guineas,  and  an  annual  sub 
scription  of  100  guineas ;  though  his  majesty  cheerfully  ac 
quiesced,*  and  amused  himself  with  the  incident.  He  also 
granted  the  Society  the  Crown  land  upon  which  their  house  is 
built  in  St.  Martin's-place ;  and  as  if  to  show  that  he  did  not 
restrict  his  patronage  to  the  higher  aim  of  letters,  there  is  prom 
inently  inscribed  upon  the  exterior  facade  of  the  Parochial 
School  of  St.  Martin's,  "built  upon  the  ground  the  gift  of  His 
Majesty  King  George  the  Fourth." 

In  this  reign,  in  1826,  was  founded  the  Society  for  "the  Dif 
fusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,"  under  the  chairmanship  of  Lord 
Brougham. f  This  was  followed  by  the  founding,  in  London,  of 
University  College  and  School,  in  1828,  for  affording  "literary 
and  scientific  education  at  a  moderate  expense,"  divinity  not 
being  taught ;  and  in  the  same  year  was  founded  King's  College 
and  School,  for  education  in  the  principles  of  the  Established 
Church. 

William  the  Fourth,  next  brother  to  George  the  Fourth,  was 
born  at  St.  James's  Palace  in  1764,  and  was  educated  at  Kew. 

*  This  costly  munificence  has  not  been  followed  by  the  successors  of  the  sovereign. 

|  The  name  and  title  of  the  Society  was,  however,  first  wrttten  in  conjunction  with  th« 
author  of  the  present  volume,  at  Brighton,  in  the  autumn  of  1824 :  and  early  in  1825, 
Nicholson's  Operative  Mechanic  was  published  "  under  the  superintendence  of  the  Society 
for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge." 

10 


146  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

When  a  child  at  play,  his  favorite  amusement  was  floating  a  toy- 
ship,  which  one  day  led  him  to  say,  with  prophetic  boast,  "If 
ever  I  shall  become  a  king,  I  will  have  a  house  full  of  >hips, 
and  no  other  King  shall  dare  to  take  them  from  me  ! "  The 
King,  his  father,  encouraged  him  to  enter  the  naval  service ;  and 
at  the  age  of  fourteen,*  he  swung  his  first  hammock  on  board  the 
Prince  George,  98  guns,  under  the  command  of  Admiral  Digby, 
where  he  was  furnished  as  scantily  as  any  youngster  of  the  mess. 
His  entire  service  at  sea  extended  nearly  to  eleven  years ;  its 
most  interesting  incident  was  his  intimacy  with  the  gallant 
Nelson,  from  whom,  in  the  prince's  own  words,  his  "mind  took 
its  first  decided  naval  turn."  This  predilection  lasted  through 
out  his  long  life  ;  he  was  some  time  Lord  High  Admiral,  and 
after  his  accession  to  the  throne  was  familiarly  styled  "  the  Sailor 
King." 

In  his  reign,  in  1833,  greatly  through  the  influence  of  Lord 
Brougham  and  his  party,  upon  the  report  of  a  Parliamentary 
Committee,  the  first  annual  grant  for  educational  purposes  was 
made  by  the  Government;  and  in  183G  was  formed  the  Home 
and  Colonial  Infant  School  Society,  upon  the  principle  that  edu 
cation  must  be  based  on  the  knowledge  of  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
and  as  set  forth  and  embodied  in  the  doctrinal  articles  of  the 
Church  of  England.  In  the  following  year  was  formed  a  "  Cen 
tral  Society  of  Education,"  principally  for  the  collection  and 
publication  of  facts,  and  bringing  prominently  forward  the  dis 
tinction  between  general  and  special  religious  instruction. 


Here  this  historic  sketch  of  the  Progress  of  Education  in 
England  may  be  closed.  The  history  of  National  Education 
during  the  last  twenty  years  scarcely  belongs  to  the  object  of  the 
present  volume.  It  may,  however,  be  interesting  to  quote  a  few 
of  its  leading  events.  In  the  autumn  of  1838,  Lord  Brougham 
lamented  what  he  considered  as  the  final  and  hopeless  failure  of 
his  life-long  efforts  in  the  cause  of  Popular  Education.!  But 

*  West  painted  the  prince's  portrait  at  this  age,  in  a  family  picture  now  in  Hampton 
Court  Palace. 

t  Lord  Brougham  received  his  education  at  Edinburgh,  which,  in  1867,  he  declared 
in  public,  he  looked  upon  as  a  very  great  benefit  conferred  on  him  by  Providenc*. 
Within  a  few  days  of  this  occasion,  at  the  opening  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  Prin 
cipal  Lee,  in  his  introductory  a<Lln-.-*.  g:ivu  a  short  account  of  the  school-days  of  Lord 
Brougham.  "Though  descended,"  he  said,  "from  an  ancient  English  family,  ho  was 
born  in  Edinburgh,  and  his  mother  was  a  niece  of  Principal  RobttrtMW.  In  ITbG,  win 'ii 
seven  years  old,  he  entered  the  High  School,  in  a  class  of  164  boys  ;  and  he  had  the  advant 
age  of"  being  instructed  by  Mr.  Luke  Fraser,  who  was  40  years  a  favorite  teacher,  under 
whose  inspection  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  commenced  his  classical  studies  along  with  the  late 
Lord  Melville,  in  tho  year  1777-  The  late  Lord  Jeffrey  \» •<-:mi<-  :i  pupil  of  the  same  master 
in  1781.  Among  the  school-fellows  of  Henry  Brougham  (amounting,  as  1  have  »id,  to 


Progress  of  Education.  147 

early  in  the  subsequent  year,  a  Committee  of  Council  was  ap 
pointed  to  dispense  the  annual  Government  grant  for  education, 
and  the  amount  was  increased  to  30,0001.  a  year.  The  next 
step  was  the  establishment  of  Normal  Schools  under  Govern 
ment  inspection.  This  was  followed  by  the  foundation  of  Train 
ing  Schools  and  Colleges,  for  the  education  and  training  of 
Schoolmasters  and  Schoolmistresses,  by  apprenticeship  as  pupil- 
teachers,  and  other  means.  And  to  provide  for  the  children  of 
the  destitute  poor,  "  Ragged  Schools  "  have  been  established 
with  great  success,  the  scheme  commencing  with  a  poor  shoe 
maker  at  Portsmouth. 

Lastly,  in  June,  1857,  was  held  in  London,  under  the  Presi 
dency  of  the  Prince  Consort,  "  A  Conference  of  the  Friends  of 
the  Education  of  the  Working  Classes,  on  the  Early  Age  at 
which  children  are  taken  from  School." 

1G4)  were  several  youths  afterward  highly  eminent,  of  whom  I  make  special  mention  of 
James  Abercrotnby,  afterward  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  now  Lord  Dunfermline  ; 
and  Joseph  Muter,  subsequently  recognized  by  the  title  of  Sir  Joseph  Straton,  one  of  the 
greatest  benefactors  of  this  University.  Lord  Brougham  was  '  dux  '  of  the  rector's  class 
in  1791.  I  personally  know  how  pre-eminently  conspicuous  at  this  University  his  at 
tainments  were,  not  in  one  or  two  branches  of  study,  but  in  all  to  which  his  attention 
was  directed,  and  particularly  in  mathematics  and  natural  philosophy,  as  well  as  in  law, 
in  metaphysics,  and  in  political  science.  Some  of  these  shreds  of  information  may  not 
be  familiarly  known  to  every  one,  but  I  allude  no  further  to  a  biography  which'is  already, 
to  a  great  extent,  written  in  our  national  history."  In  a  later  portion  of  his  address,  the 
Principal,  who  himself  entered  the  University  as  a  pupil  in  1794,  enumerated  the  lol- 
lowing  as  having  been  educafed  there,  cotemporaneously  with,  or  subsequently  to, 
Lord  Brougham  : — Thomas  M'Crie,  the  historian  ;  George  Cranstoun  (Lord  Corehouse), 
Mountstuarb  Elphinstone,  Peter  Koget,  George  Birkbeck,  Sir  David  Brewster,  Francis 
Homer,  Henry  Cockburn,  Henry  Petty  (now  Marquis  of  Lansdowne),  John  Leyden, 
Henry  Temple  (now  Lord  Palmerston),  the  Earl  of  Haddington,  Lord  Webb  Seymour, 
Lord  "Dudley,  the  Earl  of  Minco,  Lord  Glenelg,  Lord  Langdale,  and  Lord  John  Kussell. 


SCHOOL-DAYS  OF  EMINENT  MEN- 


EARLY   FORTUNES    OF   WILLIAM    OF   WYKEHAM. 


celebrated  ecclesiastic,  statesman,  and  architect,  was 
I  born  at  Wykeham,  or  Wickham,  in  Hampshire,  in  1324,  of 
parents  who,  although  poor,  were  of  creditable  descent,  as  well 
as  of  respectable  character.  He  was  put  to  school  at  Winches 
ter,  not  by  his  father,  who  was  without  the  means,  but  by  some 
wealthy  patron,  who  is  traditionally  said  to  have  been  Nicholas 
Uvedale,  governor  of  Winchester  Castle.  The  tradition  further 
asserts,  that  after  leaving  school,  he  became  Secretary  to  Uve 
dale  ;  and  that  he  was  Secretary  to  the  Constable  of  Winchester 
Castle  is  stated  in  a  written  account  compiled  in  his  own  time. 
Afterward  he  is  said  to  have  been  recommended  by  Uvedale  to 
Edyngton,  bishop  of  Winchester,  and  then  by  these  two  friends 
to  have  been  made  known  to  King  Edward  III.  There  seems 
to  be  no  reason  for  supposing  that  he  ever  studied  at  Oxford,  as 
has  been  affirmed.  It  is  evident,  indeed,  that  he  had  not  re 
ceived  a  university  education,  and  that  he  never  pretended  to 
any  skill  in  the  favorite  scholastic  learning  of  his  age.  He  is 
designated  "  clericus,"  or  clerk,  in  1352.  It  was,  however,  by 
his  skill  in  architecture  that  Wykeham  was,  in  the  short  space 
of  21  years,  promoted  to  be  Bishop  of  Winchester  and  Lord 
High  Chancellor  of  these  realms.  Of  the  colleges  which  he 
built,  that  at  Winchester  has  been  renowned  as  a  seat  of  learn 
ing  through  nearly  five  centuries,  and  its  scholars  have  been 
known  as  Wykehamites.  And  when  his  growing  honors  re 
quired  that  Wykeham  should  adopt  a  coat  of  arms,  he  chose  the 
famous  motto  : 


Banner* 
which  has  been  written  upon  the  top-beam  of  our  Tudor  halls, 


150  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

and  has  descended  as  household  words  from  an  age  of  feudalism 
to  our  own  times  of  enlightened  free-will. 

WILLIAM    CAXTON,   THE    FIRST    ENGLISH    PRINTER. 

In  the  records  of  the  boyhood  and  after-life  of  Cnxton,  which 
are  chiefly  to  be  gathered  from  his  own  hand,  we  obtain  some 
interesting  glimpses  of  the  state  of  our  language  in  the  reigns 
of  Henry  V.  and  VI.,  before  a  single  book  had  been  printed  in 
England.  Caxton's  birth  is  stated  at  about  the  year  1412,  or, 
as  he  tells  us:  "I  was  born  and  learned  mine  English  in  Kent 
in  the  Weald,  where  I  doubt  not  is  spoken  as  broad  and  rude 
English  as  in  any  place  in  England."  His  father,  a  proprietor 
of  land,  bestowed  upon  him  all  the  advantages  of  education 
which  that  rude  age  could  furnish ;  to  which  he  refers  with  sim 
ple  gratitude  in  his  Life  of  Charles  the  Great,  printed  in  1485, 
wherein  he  says : 

"  I  have  specially  reduced  (translated)  it  after  the  simple  cunning  that  God  hath  lent 
to  me,  whereof  I  humbly  and  with  all  uiy  heart  thank  Him,  and  also  am  bounden  to 
pray  for  my  father's  and  mother's  souls,  that  in  my  youth  set  me  to  school,  by  which, 
by  the  sufferance  of  God,  I  get  my  living  I  hope  truly." 

Half  a  century  before  Caxton's  boyhood,  the  children  in  the 
grammar-school  were  not  taught  English  at  all,  but  French, 
so  as  to  make  the  people  familiar  with  Norman-French,  the 
language  of  their  conquerors ;  and  it  was  the  translating,  or 
procuring  to  be  translated,  a  great  number  of  books  from  the 
French  into  English,  as  the  latter  became  more  employed,  as 
well  as  the  reduction  of  rude  and  broad  English  into  the  Eng 
lish  of  his  time;  and  the  reconciliation  of  the  varieties  of  Eng 
lish  spoken  in  different  shires,  and  the  simplification  of  "  over 
curious  terms" — which  formed  Caxton's  business  in  after-life. 
Of  his  school-days  we  have  no  positive  record.  He  was  put 
apprentice  to  one  Robert  Large,  a  considerable  mercer  or  mer 
chant,  of  London.  Books  were  now  so  costly  that  there  was 
no  special  trade  of  bookselling ;  but  the  stationers  probably 
executed  orders  for  transcribing  books.  The  mercers  or  mer 
chants,  in  their  traffic  with  other  lands,  were  the  agents  by  which 
valuable  manuscripts  found  their  way  into  England,  and  books 
were  part  of  their  commerce.  Caxton,  from  his  knowledge  of 
business,  became  a  traveling  agent  or  factor  in  the  countries  of 
Brabant,  Flanders,  Holland,  and  Zealand ;  he  resided  abroad 
for  some  years.,  there  translated  several  works,  and  in  the  Low 
Countries  learnt  the  art  of  printing,  which  he  brought  to  Eng 
land  in  1474,  and  there  printed  in  the  Almonry,  in  Westminster, 
and  subsequently  in  King-street.  All  Caxton's  works  were 
printed  in  black  letter  ;  the  two  largest  assemblages  of  the  pro- 


Anecdote  Biographies.  151 

ductions  of  his  press  now  known  are  those  in  the  British  Mu 
scum,  and  in  Earl  Spencer's  library  at  Althorpe.* 

BOYHOOD    AND    RISE    OF    SIR    THOMAS    MORE. 

Among  the  eminent  men  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  peri 
ods  of  English  history  is  Sir  Thomas  More,  the  records  of  whose 
early  life  throw  some  light  upon  the  education  of  the  time. 
More  was  born  in  Milk-street,  Cheapside,  in  1480,  five  years 
before  the  accession  of  Henry  VII.  to  the  throne.  He  was 
taught  the  first  rudiments  of  education  at  St.  Anthony's  Free 
Grammar-school,  in  Threadneedle-street,  one  of  the  four  gram 
mar-schools  founded  by  Henry  VI.,  and  at  that  period  the  most 
famous  in  London.  Here  More  soon  outstripped  all  his  young 
companions,  and  made  great  proficiency  in  Latin,  to  which  his 
studies  were  confined,  Greek  not  being  then  taught  in  schools. 

It  was  the  good  custom  of  the  age  that  the  sons  of  the  gentry, 
even  of  persons  of  rank,  should  spend  part  of  their  early  years 
in  the  houses  of  the  nobility,  where  they  might  profit  by  listen 
ing  to  the  wrisdom  of  their  elders,  and  become  accustomed,  by 
the  performance  of  humble  and  even  menial  offices,  to  stern  dis 
cipline  and  implicit  obedience.  The  internal  economy  of  a  great 
man's  family,  resembling  on  a  smaller  scale  that  of  the  monarch, 
was  thought  to  be  the  proper  school  for  acquiring  the  manners 
most  conducive  to  success  at  court.  Persons  of  good  condition 
were,  consequently,  eager  to  place  their  sons  in  the  families  of 
the  great,  as  the  surest  road  to  fortune.  In  this  station  it  was 
not  accounted  degrading  to  submit  even  to  menial  service  ;  while 
the  greatest  barons  of  the  realm  were  proud  to  officiate  as 
stewards,  cup-bearers,  and  carvers  to  the  monarch,  a  youth  of 
good  family  could  wait  at  table,  or  carry  the  train  of  a  man  of 
high  condition,  without  any  loss  of  dignity.  To  profit  by  such 
discipline,  More,  when  about  fourteen  years  of  age,  was  removed 
from  school  to  the  palace  of  Cardinal  Morton,  archbishop  of 
Canterbury  and  lord  high  chancellor.  Here  he  attracted  notice 
among  the  Cardinal's  retinue,  and  was  pointed  out  by  him  to  the 
nobility  who  frequented  his  house,  as  a  boy  of  extraordinary 
promise.  "This  child  waiting  at  table,"  he  would  say,  "whoso 
ever  shall  live  to  see  it,  will  prove  a  marvellous  man."  Listen 
ing  daily  to  the  conversation,  and  observing  the  conduct  of  such 
a  personage,  More  naturally  acquired  more  extensive  views  of 
men  and  things  than  any  other  course  of  education  could,  in  that 
backward  age,  have  supplied.  Dean  Colet,  a  visitor  at  the  Car 
dinal's,  used  to  say,  "there  is  but  one  wit  in  England,  and  that  is 
young  Thomas  More." 

*  See  Mr.  Charles    Knight's  delightful  Biography  of  Caxton.  in  The   Old   Printer  an 
the  Modern  Press.     1854. 


152  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen,  More  was  sent  by  his  patron  to 
Oxford,  where  he  studied  Greek,  which  was  then  publicly  taught 
iii  the  University,  though  not  without  opposition.  While  at  Ox 
ford,  More  composed  the  greater  number  of  his  English  poems, 
which  Ben  Jonson  speaks  of  as  some  of  the  best  in  the  English 
language.  More  retained  his  love  of  learning  throughout  life ; 
and  when  he  had  risen  to  the  highest  offices,  he  frequently  com 
plained  to  his  friend  Erasmus,  of  being  obliged  to  leave  his 
friends  and  his  books  to  discharge  what  were  to  him  disagreeable 
commissions. 

The  plan  of  Education  which  More  adopted  in  his  own  family, 
and  his  enlightened  views  on  the  Education  of  all  Classes,  have 
been  already  sketched  at  pp.  62-63  of  the  present  volume. 

THE    POETS  WYATT    AND    SURREY. 

Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,  the  poet,  was  born  at  Allington  Castle, 
near  Maidstone,  in  1503.  All  that  is  known  of  his  youth  is, 
that  at  12  years  old  he  entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  that  he  took  out  his  degrees  of  Bachelor  and  Master  in  1518 
and  1520.  About  1524,  Wyatt  was  introduced  at  court,  where 
he  was  received  into  the  King's  household;  in  1533,  he  officiated 
as  ewerer  for  his  father  at  the  coronation  of  Anne  Boleyn,  upon 
which  occasion  his  friend  Surrey,  then  about  16  years  of  age, 
carried  the  fourth  sword  with  the  scabbard  before  the  King. 
AVyatt  traveled  much  on  the  continent;  he  possessed  great  con 
versational  powers,  and  is  said  to  have  combined  the  wit  of  Sir 
Thomas  More  with  the  wisdom  of  Sir  Thomas  Cromwell.*  His 
political  knowledge  and  sound  judgment  acquired  for  him  a 
high  reputation  as  a  statesman  and  diplomatist ;  and  his  scholar 
ship  was  in  advance  of  most  men  of  his  time.  Camden  bears 
testimony  to  the  extent  and  accuracy  of  his  classical  attain 
ments:  he  spoke  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  fluently;  excelled 
in  music;  and  was  pre-eminent  for  skill  and  dexterity  in  arms. 
Surrey  has  left  a  portrait  of  Wyatt,  and  rarely  have  so  many 
noble  qualities  been  connected  into  a  single  character  —  virtue, 
wisdom,  beauty,  strength,  and  courage.  His  letters  to  his  son, 
written  from  Spain,  exhibit  close  observation  of  life ;  and  con 
tain  a  whole  code  of  maxims  for  the  government  of  conduct, 
based  on  sound  religious  principles.  He  co-operated  with  Surrey 
in  "correcting  the  ruggedness"  of  English  poetry:  it  is  said  that 
they  were  devoted  friends,  and  Surrey's  lines  on  the  death  of 
Wyatt  seem  to  indicate  a  close  and  intimate  intercourse. 

*  One  of  Wyatt's  common  sayings  was,  that  there  were  three  things  which  should 
always  be  strictly  observed  :  "  Never  to  play  with  any  man's  unhappiness  or  deformity,  for 
that  Is  inhuman  ;  nor  on  superiors,  for  that  Li  saucy  and  undutiful ;  nor  on  holy  matter*, 
for  that  i»  irreligious." 


Anecdote  Biographies.  153 

Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey,  exercised  great  influence  on 
our  poetry.  "He  founded,"  says  Mr.  Bell,  "a  new  era  in  our 
versification,  purified  and  strengthened  our  poetical  diction,  and 
carefully  shunning  the  vices  of  his  predecessors,  set  the  example 
of  a  style  in  which,  for  the  first  time,  verbal  pedantry  and  fan 
tastical  devices  were  wholly  ignored.  He  was  also  the  first 
writer  of  English  blank  verse,  and  the  sonnet,  and  the  first  poet 
who  understood  and  exemplified  the  art  of  translation."  The 
poet  became  Earl  of  Surrey  on  the  accession  of  his  father  to 
the  Dukedom  of  Norfolk  in  1524;  he  is  thought  to  have  been 
born  about  1517.  He  was  placed  at  court,  about  the  person  of 
Henry  VIII.,  at  the  early  age  of  15,  but  it  is  uncertain  whether 
he  studied  at  college.  His  boyhood  was  passed  in  the  society 
of  such  men  as  Lord  Berners,  the  translator  of  Froissart;  Vere, 
Earl  of  Oxford ;  Lord  Stafford,  Lord  Morley,  and  others  equally 
distinguished  by  their  literary  attainments.  Surrey,  in  his  child 
hood,  was  always  sent  during  the  winter  months  to  Hunsdon, 
one  of  the  estates  of  his  grandfather,  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  in 
Hertfordshire.  This  seat,  about  1536,  became  the  residence  of 
Princess  Mary ;  with  her  was  living  the  fair  Geraldine,  with 
whom  Surrey  fell  in  love,  and  her  name  is  indissolubly  united 
with  his  in  many  a  legend  in  prose  and  verse,  wherein  he  show 
ed  "the  noblest  qualities  of  chivalry  blended  with  the  graces 
of  learning  and  a  cultivated  taste."  Having  traveled  into  Italy, 
he  became  a  devoted  student  of  the  poets  of  that  country  — 
Dante,  Petrarch,  Boccaccio,  and  Ariosto — and  formed  his  own 
poetical  style  on  theirs. 

Surrey,  among  his  general  accomplishments,  appears  to  have 
cultivated  the  study  of  heraldry,  which  helped  to  bring  him  to 
the  block ;  for  the  chief  charge  against  him  by  his  enemies  was 
his  having  illegally  quartered  on  his  escutcheon  the  arms  of  Ed 
ward  the  Confessor,  which,  however,  he  was  entitled  to  do.  He 
was  beheaded  on  Tower-hill,  January  21,  1547. 

LORD    BTIRLEIGH   AT  CAMBRIDGE. 

That  truly  great  statesman,  William  Cecil,  Lord  Burleigh, 
descended  from  an  ancient  and  respectable  family,  was  born  at 
Bourne,  in  Lincolnshire,  in  the  year  1520.  Both  his  father  and 
grandfather  held  honorable  appointments  under  Henry  VIII. 
During  his  early  education,  his  progress  either  exhibited  noth 
ing  remarkable,  or  has  been  overlooked  by  his  biographers, 
amidst  the  splendor  of  his  succeeding  transactions ;  for  we  are 
merely  informed  that  he  received  the  first  rudiments  of  learning 
at  the  grammar-school  of  Grantham  and  Stamford.  But  at  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  to  which  he  was  removed  in  the 


154  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

fifteenth  year  of  his  age,  he  gave  strong  indications  of  the  quali 
ties  calculated  to  raise  him  to  future  eminence.  Here  he  was 
distinguished  by  the  regularity  of  his  conduct,  and  the  intensity 
of  his  application.  That  lie  might  daily  devote  several  hours 
to  study  without  any  hazard  of  interruption,  he  made  an  agree 
ment  with  the  bell-ringer  to  be  called  up  every  morning  at  four 
o'clock.  Through  this  extreme  application,  without  proper  in 
tervals  of  exercise,  he,  however,  contracted  a  painful  distemper, 
which  led  to  his  being  afflicted  with  gout  in  the  latter  part  of  his 
life. 

His  indefatigable  industry  at  college,  and  his  consequent  pro 
ficiency,  was  marked  by  occasional  presents  from  the  Master. 
He  began,  at  sixteen,  to  put  in  practice  the  method,  then  usual, 
of  acquiring  literary  celebrity,  by  delivering  a  public  lecture. 
His  first  topic  was  the  logic  of  the  schools ;  and  three  years 
afterward  he  ventured  to  comment  on  the  Greek  language.  He 
was  subsequently  ambitious  of  excelling  as  a  general  scholar ; 
and  successively  directed  his  industry  to  the  various  branches  of 
literature  then  cultivated  at  the  university. 

At  twenty-one  he  entered  Gray's  Inn,  where  he  applied  him 
self  to  the  study  of  the  law  with  the  same  method  and  industry 
as  he  had  observed  at  Cambridge.  He  found  leisure  also  for 
several  collateral  pursuits:  the  antiquities  of  the  kingdom,  and 
more  especially  the  pedigrees  and  fortunes  of  the  most  distin 
guished  families,  occupied  much  of  his  attention;  and  such  was 
his  progress  in  these  pursuits,  that  no  man  of  his  time  was  ac 
counted  a  more  complete  adept  in  heraldry.  This  species  of 
information,  had  he  adhered  to  his  destination  for  the  bar,  might 
have  been  of  little  utility ;  but  in  his  career  of  a  statesman,  it 
often  proved  of  essential  advantage. 

Ills  practice  was  to  record  with  his  pen  everything  worthy  of  notice  which  occurred  to 
him  either  in  reading  or  observation,  arranging  this  observation  in  the  most  methodical 
manner,— a  singular  example  of  diligence,  which  is  authenticated  to  posterity  by  collec 
tions  of  his  manuscripts,  still  preserved  in  many  public  and  private  libraries.  While  from 
this  practice  he  derived,  besides  other  advantages,  an  uncommon  facility  in  committing  his 
thoughts  to  writing,  he  neglected  not  to  cultivate  an  accomplishment  still  more  essential 
to  his  intended  profession — a  ready  and  graceful  enunciation.  By  frequenting  various 
companies,  and  entering  into  free  discussion,  he  learned  to  express  himself  with  ease  and 
confidence ;  while  the  extent  of  his  information,  and  the  soundness  of  his  judgment,  pre 
vented  his  fluency  from  degenerating  into  declamation. — Macdiarmitl's  British  Statesmen. 

Such  was  the  educational  basis  upon  which  Cecil  laid  the 
foundation  of  his  brilliant  but  sound  reputation ;  and  by  which 
means,  conjoined  with  the  strong  natural  gift  of  sagacity,  and  a 
mind  tinctured  with  piety,  he  acquired  the  esteem  and  confidence 
successively  of  three  sovereigns,  and  held  the  situation  of  prime 
minister  of  England  for  upward  of  .half  a  century.  His  sole 
literary  production  was  a  volume  of  Precepts  or  Directions  for 


Anecdote  Biographies.  155 

the  Well-  Ordering  and  Carriage  of  a  Man's  Life,  addressed  to 
his  son. 

CAMDEN'S  SCHOOLS. 

Camden,  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of  learned  Englishmen, 
was  born  May  22,  1551,  in  the  Old  Bailey,  where  his  father  was 
a  painter-stainer.  He  died  when  his  son  was  but  a  child,  and 
left  little  provision  for  him.  Dr.  Smith,  in  his  Life  of  Camden, 
mentions  his  early  admission  into  Christ's  Hospital  as  a  fact  not 
well  authenticated,  but  very  generally  believed  ;  and  the  imper 
fect  state  of  the  records  does  not  admit  of  its  verification.  At 
all  events,  an  attack  of  the  plague  caused  his  removal  in  15G3  ; 
and  after  his  recovery,  he  was  sent  to  St.  Paul's  School,  and 
thence  to  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  in  156G. —  Trollopes  His 
tory  of  Christ's  Hospital. 

Wood,  in  his  Athence  Oxonienses,  states  positively  that  "  when 
this  most  eminent  person  was  £  child,  he  received  the  first  knowl 
edge  of  letters  in  Christchurch  Hospital  in  London,  then  newly 
founded  for  blue-coated  children,  where,  being  fitted  for  gram 
mar-learning,  he  was  sent  to  the  free  school,  founded  by  Dr. 
Colet,  near  to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral."  Thence  he  removed  to 
Oxford,  where  he  studied  in  more  than  one  college.  He  left  the 
university  in  1571,  and  became  an  under-master  of  Westminster 
School,  the  duties  of  which  he  discharged  at  the  time  when 
he  composed  the  works  which  have  made  his  name  so  eminent. 
The  most  celebrated  of  these  are  his  Britannia,  a  survey  of  the 
British  Isles ;  and  his  Annals  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth ;  both 
written  in  pure  and  elegant  Latin.  Camden  was  now  looked 
upon  as  one  of  the  most  distinguished  scholars  of  his  age  :  he  is 
termed  "  the  Pausanias  of  England."  He  was  made  head-mas 
ter  of  Westminster  School  in  1592:  he  had  among  his  scholars, 
Ben  Jonson  ;  he  wrote  a  small  Greek  Grammar  for  the  use  of 
the  school ;  and  shortly  before  his  death,  he  founded  an  histori 
cal  lecture  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  He  died  in  1G23,  and 
was  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey,  a  great  assemblage  of  the 
learned  and  illustrious  doing  him  honor  at  his  funeral. 

To  Camden,  Ben  Jonson  dedicated  his  first  play,  Every  Man 
in  his  Humor  ;  hoping,  to  use  his  own  words  in  addressing  his 
Master,  "  that  the  confession  of  my  studies  might  not  repent 
you  to  have  been  my  instructor ;  for  the  profession  of  my  thank 
fulness,  I  am  sure  it  will,  with  good  men,  find  either  praise  or 
excuse.  Your  true  lover,  Ben  Jonson." 

The  career  of  Camden  strikingly  illustrates  the  benefits  of 
English  school  foundations.  Left  a  poor  orphan,  he  was  one  of 
the  first  boys  admitted  into  Christ's  Hospital,  where  he  sowed 


156  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

the  seed  of  that  learning  which  was  matured  in  the  University 
of  Oxford,  and  employed  for  the  advantage  of  the  next  genera 
tion  in  his  mastership  at  Westminster.  He  left  to  the  Pain- 
ter-Stainers'  Company,  of  which  his  father  was  a  member, 
•A  silver  loving-cup,  which  is  produced  on  every  St.  Luke's 
Day  feast. 

SIR    EDWARD    COKE'S    LEGAL    STUDIES. 

This  celebrated  lord-chief-justice  was  born  in  1551-2,  at 
Mileham,  Norfolk,  in  which  county  the  Cokes  had  been  settled 
for  many  generations.  His  father,  who  was  a  bencher  of  Lin 
coln's  Inn,  sent  him  to  the  Free  Grammar-school  at  Norwich, 
whence,  in  1567,  he  removed  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
After  having  spent  three  years  at  the  University,  he  went  to 
London,  to  commence  his  legal  education  :  he  became  a  member 
of  Clifford's  Inn,  and  in  1572  was  admitted  into  the  Inner  Tem 
ple  ;  here  he  entered  into  a  laborious  course  of  study,  which  Lord 
Campbell  thus  vividly  describes : 

Every  morning  at  three,  in  the  winter  season  lighting  his  own  fire,  he  read  Bracton, 
Littleton,  the  Year  Books,  and  the  folio  Abridgments  of  the  Law,  till  the  Courts  met  at 
eight.  He  then  went  by  water  to  AVestminster,  and  heard  cases  argued  till  twelve,  when 
pleas  ceased  for  dinner.  After  a  short  repast  in  the  Inner  Temple  Hall,  he  attended 
''readings"  or  lectures  in  the  afternoon,  and  then  resumed  his  private  studies  till  five, 
or  supper-time.  This  meal  being  ended,  the  moots  took  place,  when  difficult  questions  of 
law  were  proposed  and  discussed, — if  the  weather  was  fine,  in  the  garden  hy  the  river 
Mde  ;  if  it  rained,  in  the  covered  walks  near  the  Temple  Church.  Finally,  he  shut  him 
self  up  iu  bis  chamber,  and  worked  at  his  common-place  book,  in  which  he  inserted, 
under  the  proper  heads,  all  the  legal  information  he  had  collected  during  the  day. 
When  nine  o'clock  struck,  he  retired  to  bed,  that  he  might  have  an  equal  portion  of 
sleep  before  and  after  midnight.  The  Globe  and  other  theatres  were  rising  into  repute, 
but  he  would  never  appear  at  any  of  them ;  nor  would  he  indulge  in  such  unprofitable 
reading  as  the  poems  of  Lord  Surrey  or  Spenser.  When  Shakspeare  and  Ben  Jonson 
came  into  such  Jashion  that  even  usad  apprentices  of  the  law''  occasionally  assisted  in 
masques  and  wrote  prologues,  he  most  steadily  eschewed  all  such  amusements ;  and  it 
is  supposed  that  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  he  never  saw  a  play  acted,  or  read  a  play, 
or  was  in  company  with  a  player ! 

To  Coke's  merits  there  cannot  be  a  more  direct  testimony 
than  that  of  his  great  rival.  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  who  speaks  of 
his  great  industry  and  learning  in  terms  of  high  and  deserved 
commendation  ;  and  justly  ascribes  to  him  the  praise  of  having 
preserved  the  vessel  of  the  common  law  in  a  steady  and  consis 
tent  course. 

We  gather  what  the  fare  of  the  Universities  was  about  this 
period,  from  the  following  description  of  Cambridge,  given  at 
St.  Paul's  Cross,  in  the  year  1550,  by  Thomas  Lever,  soon  after 
made  Master  of  St.  John's  College : 

•'  There  be  divers  there  at  Cambridge  which  ri.«e  daily  b«twixt  four  and  five  of  the 
clock  in  the  morning,  and  from  five  until  six  of  the  clock  use  common  prayer,  with 
an  exhortation  of  God's  word  in  a  common  chapel ;  and  from  six  until  ten  of  the 
clock  use  either  private  study  or  common  lectures.  At  ten  of  the  clock,  they  go  to  din 
ner  ;  whereas  they  be  content  with  a  penny  piece  of  beef  amongst  four,  having  a  few 
pottage  made  of  the  broth  of  the  same  beef,  with  salt  and  oatmeal,  and  nothing  else. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  157 

After  this  slender  dinner,  they  be  either  teaching  or  learning  until  five  of  the  clock  in 
the  evening,  when  they  have  a  supper  not  much  better  than  their  dinner  Immediately 
after  the  which  they  go  either  to  reasoning  in  problems,  or  into  some  other  study,  un 
til  it  be  nine  or  ten  of  the  clock  ;  and  then  being  without  fire,  are  fain  to  walk  or  run  up 
and  down  half  an  hour,  to  get  a  heat  on  their  feet,  when  they  go  to  bed. 

"  These  be  men  not  weary  of  their  pains,  but  very  sorry  to  leave  their  study  •  and 
sure  they  be  not  able  some  of  them  to  continue  for  lack  of  necessary  exhibition  and 
relief." 

SPENSER   AT    CAMBRIDGE. 

Edmund  Spenser,  one  of  the  great  landmarks  of  English 
poetry,  was  born  in  East  Smithfield,  near  the  Tower,  about  the 
year  1553  ;  as  he  sings  in  his  Prothalamion : 

Merry  London,  my  most  kindly  nurse, 
That  gave  to  me  this  life's  first  native  source, 
Though  from  another  place  I  take  my  name, 
An  house  of  ancient  fame. 

The  rank  of  his  parents,  or  the  degree  of  his  affinity  with  the 
ancient  house  of  Spenser,  is  not  fully  established.  Gibbon  says  : 
"  The  nobility  of  the  Spensers  has  been  illustrated  and  enriched 
by  the  trophies  of  Marlborough  ;  but  I  exhort  them  to  consider 
the  Faery  Queen  as  the  most  precious  jewel  in  their  coronet." 
The  poet  was  entered  a  sizar  (one  of  the  humblest  class  of  stu 
dents)  of  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  in  1569,  and  continued 
to  attend  college  for  seven  years.  "  Of  his  proficiency  during 
this  time,"  says  Johnson,  "  a  favorable  opinion  may  be  drawn 
from  the  many  classical  allusions  in  his  works."  At  Cambridge, 
he  became  intimate  with  Gabriel  Harvey,  the  future  astrologer, 
who  induced  the  poet  to  repair  to  London,  and  there  introduced 
him  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  "  one  of  the  very  diamonds  of  her 
Majesty's  court."  Of  Spenser  it  has  been  well  said  that  he  and 
Chaucer  are  the  only  poets  before  Shakspeare  who  have  given 
to  the  language  anything  that  in  its  kind  has  not  been  surpassed, 
and  in  some  sort  superseded — Chaucer  in  his  Canterbury  Tales, 
and  Spenser  in  his  Faery  Queen.  Spenser  is  thought  to  have 
been  known  as  a  votary  of  the  Muses  among  his  fellow-students 
at  Cambridge  :  there  are  several  poems  in  a  Theatre  for  World 
lings,  a  collection  published  in  the  year  in  which  he  became  a 
member  of  the  University,  which  are  believed  to  have  come  from 
his  pen. 

RICHARD    HOOKER   AT   HEAVITREE. 

The  boyhood  of  Richard  Hooker,  the  learned  and  judicious 
divine,  and  the  earliest  and  one  of  the  most  distinguished  prose- 
writers  of  his  time,  presents  some  interesting  traits.  He  was 
born  at  Heavitree,  near  Exeter,  about  1553,  of  parents  "  not  so 
remarkable  for  their  extraction  or  riches,  as  for  their  virtue  and 
industry,  and  God's  blessing  upon  both."  When  a  child,  he  was 


158  School-Day*  of  Eminent  Men. 

grave  in  manner  and  expression.  By  the  kindness  of  his  uncle, 
he  obtained  a  better  education  at  x-hool  than  his  parents  could 
have  afforded  ;  and  when  a  school-boy,  "  he  was  an  early  ques- 
tionist,  quietly  inquisitive,  Why  this  ims,  and  that  was  not,  to  be 
remembered  f"  Why  this  -was  granted,  and  that  denied  ?  "  Hence 
his  schoolmaster  prr.-uaded  his  parents,  who  intended  him  for  an 
apprentice,  to  continue  him  at  school,  the  good  man  assuring 
them  that  he  would  double  his  diligence  in  instructing  him." 
"And  in  the  mean  time  his  parents  and  master  laid  a  foundation 
for  his  future  happiness,  by  instilling  into  his  soul  the  seeds  of 
piety,  those  conscientious  principles  of  loving  and  fearing  God; 
of  an  early  belief  that  he  knows  the  very  secrets  of  our  souls ; 
that  he  punishes  our  vices,  and  rewards  our  innocence;  that  we 
should  be  free  from  hypocrisy,  and  appear  to  men  what  we  are 
to  God,  because,  first  or  last,  the  crafty  man  iscatcht  in  his  own 
snare."  Jewel,  bishop  of  Salisbury,  next  took  Hooker  under 
his  care,  sent  him  to  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  and  con 
tributed  to  his  support.  Having  entered  into  holy  orders,  he 
was  appointed  Master  of  the  Temple,  London  ;  and  the  church 
contains  a  bust  erected  by  the  benchers  to  his  memory.  Hooker's 
most  celebrated  work  is  his  treatise  on  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity," 
a  powerful  defense  of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  the  first 
publication  in  the  English  language  which  presented  a  train  of 
clear  logical  reasoning. 

SIR    PHILIP    SIDNEY,    "THE    ENGLISH    PETRARCH." 

Sir  Philip  Sidney — a  name  which  most  educated  Englishmen 
have  learnt  to  admire  and  love — was  born  in  1554,  at  Penshurst 
Place,  in  Kent,  where  an  oak,  planted  to  commemorate  the  event, 
flourishes  to  this  day. 

Young  Sidney  was  placed  at  the  Free  Grammar-school  of 
Shrewsbury.*  While  there,  his  father,  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  "  a 
man  of  great  parts,"  addressed  a  letter  to  him,  in  15GG,  full  of 
sterling  advice.  His  biographer  and  companion.  Lord  Brooke, 
states  that  at  this  early  age,  Philip  was  distinguished  for  intelli 
gence,  and  for  a  gravity  beyond  his  years.  In  1569,  he  was 
entered  at  Christchurch,  Oxford,  and  is  reported  to  have  held  a 
public  disputation  with  Carew,  the  author  of  the  Survey  of  Corn 
wall ;  while  at  college  he  displayed  a  remarkable  acuteness  of 
intellect  and  craving  for  knowle<ij 

In  1572,  Philip  Sidney  left  England,  and  proceeded  on  his 

*  Founded  by  King  Edward  VI.  In  our  own  time,  this  school  has  maintained  ita 
pre-eminent  rank,  under  the  able  bead-mastership  of  the  Kev.  Dr.  Butler.  The  School- 
housc  i*  situated  near  the  Castle  of  Shrewsbury,  and  is  built  of  freestone,  in  the  Itali.-uii/A'd 
'ludor  style  ;  it  occupies  two  sides  of  a  quadrangle,  with  a  square  pinnacled  tower  at  the 
angle,  which  was  partly  rebuilt  in  1831. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  159 

travels  into  France.  He  was  furnished  with  a  license  to  pass 
into  foreign  lands,  with  three  servants  and  four  horses ;  and 
was  placed  under  the  protection  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  the  Lord 
Admiral. 

Sidney  was  at  this  time  in  his  eighteenth  year,  and  his  boyhood  already  gave  promise  of 
all  those  graces  of  mind  and  of  person  for  which  his  riper  years  were  so  famous.  He  was 
tall  and  well  shaped  ;  and  even  at  his  early  age,  skillful  in  all  manly  exercices  His  hair 
and  complexion  were  very  fair,  and  his  countenance  soft  and  pensive  as  a  woman's,  and 
yet  full  both  of  intelligence  and  thoughtfulness  Indeed,  if  the  gift  of  nature  descend  by 
inheritance,  we  cannot  wonder  that  there  should  be  in  him  a  rare  union  of  fine  qualities  : 
for  his  father,  Sir  Henry,  Lord-President  of  Wales,  and  afterward  Deputy  of  Ireland,  was 
the  very  type  of  a  noble  English  gentleman,  excellent  as  a  soldier  and  a  statesman  —  that 
is,  upright  and  prudent,  brave  and  loyal.  His  mother,  the  Lady  Mary,  was  full  worthy  to 
be  the  wife  of  such  a  man  She  was  one  of  those  women  who  are  the  richest  ornaments 
of  English  History ;  one  whose  noble  nature  had  been  trained  by  the  discipline  of  sorrow 
to  the  highest  degree  of  excellence.  She  was  the  daughter  of  John,  Duke  of  Northum 
berland  ;  and  when  her  eldest  son,  Philip,  was  born,  she  wore  mourning  for  her  father, 
her  brother,  and  her  sister-in-law,  the  Lady  Jane,  who  had  all  died  on  the  scaffold.  "  The 
clearness  of  his  father's  judgment,"  writes  Fulke  Greville,  "and  the  ingenious  sensibleness 
of  his  mother's,  brought  forth  so  happy  a  temper  in  their  eldest  son.  From  the  father  he 
had  the  stout  heart,  and  the  strong  hand,  and  keen  intelligence,  while  his  mother  has  set 
on  him  the  stamp  of  her  own  sweet  and  very  gentle  nature." — Life  of  Sidney,  by  Steunrt  A. 
Pears,  M.A. 

Paris  was  Sidney's  first  halting-place,  and  here  he  was  intro 
duced  to  the  dazzling  and  bewildering  splendor  of  the  court  of 
Catharine  de  Medicis.  "  Sidney,"  says  Mr.  Pears,  "  had  heard 
much  of  this  queen  and  her  brilliant  court:  in  the  quiet  days 
which  he  had  passed  at  Penshurst,  Ludlow,  and  Oxford,  he  had 
often  dreamed  of  such  scenes ;  often  too  he  had  talked  over  the 
wild  doings  of  the  civil  wars  of  France  ;  had  his  favorite  heroes, 
and  in  his  fancy  formed  pictures  of  them  —  and  here  he  stood 
in  the  very  midst  of  these  men."  But  while  in  the  full  enjoy 
ment  of  the  pleasure  and  luxury  of  Paris,  Sidney's  mind  was 
horrified  by  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  —  of  near  5000 
persons  —  and  he  fled  for  shelter  to  the  English  embassy:  the 
effect  of  this  tragedy  on  him  was  deep,  and  never  effaced. 
From  France  he  proceeded  to  Belgium,  Germany,  Hungary,  and 
Italy.  At  Frankfort,  he  first  became  acquainted  with  Herbert 
Languet,  and  addressed  to  him  a  volume  of  letters  in  Latin, 
which  Mr.  Pears  has  translated,  with  a  few  of  Sidney's  replies. 
He  observes : 

Sidney's  letters  arc  not  remarkable  for  the  elegance  of  their  style,  for  he  was  then  only 
practicing  his  pen  in  Latin  writing;  nor  is  it  the  wit  and  humor  of  his  letters  that  render 
them  worthy  of  attention  and  praise ;  but  there  is  such  a  spirit  of  gentleness  through 
them  all,  so  much  manliness  of  thought,  expressed  with  the  greatest  modesty  and  simpli 
city,  that  they  cannot  fail  to  please  those  who  delight  in  watching  the  opening  of  a  fine 
character.  And  if  they  do  not  possess  that  profusion  of  wit  which  loads  the  pages  of  some 
modern  letter-writers,  who  (to  use  the  words  of  Sidney  himself)  ''cast  sugar  and  spice  up 
on  every  dish  that  is  served  at  table,"  they  have  a  charm  which  no  mere  man  of  fashion, 
be  he  never  so  brilliant  and  versed  in  belles-lettres,  can  attain  or  even  appreciate.  They 
are  full  of  the  quiet  play  of  a  heart  overflowing  with  affection.  Hence  the  offensive  crit 
icism  of  Horace  Walpole  on  Sidney's  writings. 

Sidney  next  arrived  at  Vienna,  where  he  perfected  himself 


160  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

in  horsemanship  and  other  exercises  peculiar  to  those  times. 
At  Venice  he  became  acquainted  with  Edmund  Wotton,  brother 
to  Sir  Henry  Wotton.  He  is  said  also  to  have  enjoyed  the 
friendship  of  Tasso,  but  this  statement  cannot  be  verified.  Sid 
ney  returned  to  England  in  1573;  and,  famed  aforehand  by  a 
noble  report  of  his  accomplishments,  which,  together  with  the 
state  of  his  person,  framed  by  a  natural  propension  to  arms,  he 
soon  attracted  the  good  opinion  of  all  men,  and  was  so  highly 
prized  in  the  good  opinion  of  the  queen  (Elizabeth),  that  she 
"  thought  the  court  deficient  without  him."  Connected  with  this 
success  is  Sidney's  first  literary  attempt,  a  masque  entitled  The 
Lady  of  May,  which  was  performed  before  Queen  Elizabeth,  at 
Wanstead  House,  in  Essex. 

After  Sidney's  quarrel  at  tennis  with  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  he 
retired  from  court  to  Wilton,  the  seat  of  his  brother-in-law,  the 
Earl  of  Pembroke :  and  there,  in  the  companionship  of  his  sis 
ter  Mary,  he  wrote,  for  her  amusement,  the  Arcadia,  which, 
probably,  received  some  additions  from  her  pen. 

The  chivalry  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  his  learning,  generous  pat 
ronage  of  talent,  and  his  untimely  fate  (he  fell  at  Zutphen,  in 
his  thirty-third  year),  make  his  character  of  great  interest.  "He 
was  a  gentleman  finished  and  complete,  in  whom  mildness  was 
associated  with  courage,  erudition  mollified  by  refinement,  and 
courtliness  dignified  by  truth.  He  is  a  specimen  of  what  the 
English  character  was  capable  of  producing  when  foreign  ad 
mixtures  had  not  destroyed  its  simplicity,  or  politeness  debased 
its  honor.  Such  was  Sidney,  of  whom  every  Englishman  has 
reason  to  be  proud.  He  was  the  best  prose-writer  of  his  time. 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  calls  him  "  the  English  Petrarch,"  and  Cow- 
per  speaks  of  him  as  "a  warbler  of  poetic  prose."  He  trod, 
from  his  cradle  to  the  grave,  amidst  incense  and  flowers,  and 
died  in  a  dream  of  glory. 

BOYHOOD    OF   LORD    BACOX. 

Of  the  early  years  of  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  father  of  Sir 
Francis  Bacon,  the  biography  is  uncertain;  but  he  received  his 
scholastic  education  at  Benet  (Corpus  Christi)  College,  Cam 
bridge,  and  completed  his  studies  abroad.  Of  his  illustrious  son, 
Francis  Bacon,  born  in  the  Strand,  in  15G1,  we  have  some  in 
teresting  early  traits.  His  health  was  delicate ;  and  by  his 
gravity  of  carriage,  and  love  of  sedentary  pursuits,  he  was  dis 
tinguished  from  other  boys.  While  a  mere  child,  he  stole  away 
from  his  play-fellows  to  a  vault  in  St.  James's  Fields,  to  investi 
gate  the  cause  of  a  singular  echo  which  he  had  observed  there  ; 
and  when  only  twelve,  he  busied  himself  with  speculations  on 


Anecdote  Biographies.  161 

the  art  of  legerdemain.*  At  thirteen  he  was  entered  at  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  which  he  left  after  a  residence  of  three 
years,  "carrying  with  him  a  profound  contempt  for  the  cours< 
of  study  pursued  there,  a  fixed  conviction  that  the  system  of 
academic  education  in  England  was  radically  vicious,  a  just 
scorn  for  the  trifles  on  which  the  followers  of  Aristotle  had 
wasted  their  powers,  and  no  great  reverence  for  Aristotle  him 
self."  (Macaulay.)  Such  was  the  foundation  of  Bacon's  phi 
losophy  :  the  influence  of  his  writings  has  been  glanced  at  in 
page  116. 

THE    ADMIRABLE    CRICHTON. 

The  combined  genius,  learning,  and  physical  advantages  which 
obtained  for  this  celebrated  Scotchman  the  title  of  Admirable, 
however  oft-told,  must  be  briefly  related  in  this  work.  James 
Crichton,  son  of  Robert  Crichton,  of  Eliock,  who  was  Lord 
Advocate  to  King  James  VI.,  was  born  in  Scotland,  in  the  year, 
1561.  The  precise  place  of  his  birth  is  not  mentioned;  but, 
having  acquired  the  rudiments  of  education  at  Edinburgh,  he  was 
sent  to  study  philosophy  and  the  sciences  at  St.  Andrew's,  then 
the  most  renowned  seminary  in  Scotland,  where  the  illustrious 
Buchanan  was  one  of  his  masters.  At  the  ealy  age  of  fourteen 
he  took  his  degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  and  was  regarded  as  a 
prodigy,  not  only  in  abilities  but  actual  attainments.  He  was 
considered  the  third  reader  in  the  college,  and  in  a  short  time 
became  complete  master  of  the  philosophy  and  languages  of  the 
time,  as  well  as  of  ten  different  languages. 

It  was  then  the  custom  for  Scotchmen  of  birth  to  finish  their 
education  abroad,  and  serve  in  some  foreign  army  previously  to 
their  entering  that  of  their  own  country.  When  he  was  only 
sixteen  or  seventeen  years  old  (the  date  cannot  be  fixed), 
Crichton's  father  sent  him  to  the  Continent.  He  had  scarcely 
arrived  in  Paris,  when  he  publicly  challenged  all  scholars  and 
philosophers  to  a  disputation  at  the  College  of  Navarre,  to  be 
carried  on  in  any  of  the  twelve  specified  languages,  "in  any 
science,  liberal  art,  discipline,  or  faculty,  whether  practical  or 
theoretic ;  and,  as  if  to  show  in  how  little  need  he  stood  of  prep 
aration,  or  how  lightly  he  held  his  adversaries,  he  spent  the  six 
weeks  that  elapsed  between  the  challenge  and  the  contest  in  a 
continued  round  of  tilting,  hunting,  and  dancing."  On  the 

*  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  was  taken  with  the  smartness  of  Bacon's  answers  when  he  was 
a  boy,  used  to  try  him  with  questions  on  various  subjects  ;  and  it  is  said  that  once  when 
she  asked  him  how  old  he  was,  his  reply  was  ingeniously  complimentary  :  u  I  am  just 
two  years  younger  than  your  Majesty's  happy  reign."  Elizabeth  expressed  her  approba 
tion  by  calling  the  boy  her  "  Young  Lord  Keeper." 

11 


162  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

appointed  day,  however,  he  encountered  "tin-  ^ruvrst  philos 
ophers  and  divines,"  when  lie  acquitted  himself  to  the  aston 
ishment  of  all  who  heard  him,  and  received  the  public  praises 
of  the  president,  and  four  of  the  most  eminent  professors. 
Next  day,  he  was  equally  victorious  at  a  tilting  match  at  the 
Louver,  where,  through  the  enthusiasm  of  the  ladies  of  the 
court,  and  from  the  versatility  of  his  talents,  his  youth,  the 
gracefulness  of  his  manners,  and  the  beauty  of  his  person,  he  was 
named  V Admirable. 

After  two  years'  service  in  the  army  of  Henry  III.,  Crichton 
repaired  to  Italy,  and  at  Rome  repeated  in  the  presence  of  the 
pope  and  cardinals  the  literary  challenge  and  triumph  that  had 
gained  him  so  much  honor  in  Paris.  From  Rome  he  went  to 
Venice,  and  in  the  university  of  the  neighboring  city  of  Padua, 
reaped  fresh  honors  by  Latin  poetry,  scholastic  disputation,  an 
exposition  of  the  errors  of  Aristotle  and  his  commentators,  and 
(as  a  playful  wind-up  of  the  day's  labor)  a  declamation  upon  the 
happiness  of  ignorance.  lie  next,  in  consequence  of  the  doubts 
of  some  incredulous  persons,  and  the  reports  that  he.  was  a 
literary  impostor,  gave  a  public  challenge:  the  contest,  which 
included  the  Aristotelian  and  Platonic  philosophies,  and  the 
mathematics  of  the  time,  was  prolonged  during  three  days,  before 
an  innumerable  concourse  of  people;  when  Aldus  Manutius,  the 
celebrated  Venetian  printer,  who  was  present  at  this  "mirac 
ulous  encounter,"  states  Crichton  to  have  proven  completely 
victorious. 

Crichton  now  pursued  his  travels  to  the  court  of  Mantua,  but 
to  a  combat  more  tragical  than  those  carried  on  by  the  tongue 
or  by  the  pen.  Here  he  met  a  certain  Italian  gentleman  "of  a 
mighty  able,  nimble,  and  vigorous  body,  but  by  nature  fierce, 
cruel,  warlike,  and  audacious,  and  superlatively  expert  and 
dexterous  in  the  use  of  his  weapon."  lie  had  already  killed  three 
of  the  best  swordsmen  of  Mantua;  but  Crichton,  who  had  studied 
the  sword  from  his  youth,  and  who  had  probably  improved  him 
self  in  the  use  of  the  rapier  in  Italy,  challenged  the  bravo:  they 
fought;  the  young  Scotchman  was  victorious,  and  the  Italian  left 
dead  on  the  spot.  At  the  court  of  Mantua,  too,  Crichton  wrote 
Italian  comedies,  and  played  the  principal  parts  in  them  himself, 
with  great  success.  But  he  was  shortly  after  assassinated  by 
Vincenzo  Gonzaga,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Mantua,  it  is  supposed 
through  jealousy.  Thus  was  Crichton  cut  off  in  his  twenty- 
second  year,  without  leaving  any  proof  of  his  genius  except  a 
few  Latin  verses,  printed  by  Aldus  Manutius;  and  the  testi 
monials  of  undoubted  and  extreme  admiration  of  several 


Anecdote  Biographies.  163 

distinguished  Itlalian  authors  who  were  his  cotemporaries  and 
associates. 

HOW  GEORGE  ABBOT,  THE  CLOTHWEAVER's  SON,  BECAME 
ARCHBISHOP  OF  CANTERBURY. 

In  1562,  there  was  born  unto  a  poor  cloth  worker,  at  Guild- 
ford,  in  Surrey,  a  son,  under  these  remarkable  circumstances. 
His  mother,  shortly  before  his  birth,  dreamt  that  if  she  could 
eat  a  jack  or  a  pike,  the  child  would  become  a  great  man.  She 
accordingly  sought  for  the  fish;  and  accidentally,  taking  up 
some  of  the  river  water  (that  runs  close  by  the  house)  in  a 
pail,  she  also  took  up  the  jack,  dressed  it,  and  devoured  it 
almost  all.  This  odd  affair  induced  several  persons  of  quality  to 
offer  themselves  to  be  sponsors  when  the  child  was  christened ; 
and  this  the  poverty  of  the  parents  induced  them  joyfully  to 
accept.  Such  was  the  tradition  of  the  place,  which  Aubrey,  in 
1692,  heard  on  the  testimony  of  the  minister,  and  other  trust 
worthy  inhabitants. 

In  spite  of  the  dream,  however,  George  Abbot  would,  in  all 
probability,  have  been  a  clothworker,  like  his  father,  had  there 
not  been  in  those  days  many  admirable  institutions  for  the  educa 
tion  of  the  humbler  classes.  He  was  sent  to  the  Free  Grammar 
School,  founded  by  a  grocer  of  London  in  1553,  for  thirty  "of 
the  poorest  men's  sons"  of  Guildford,  to  be  taught  to  read  and 
write  English,  and  cast  accounts  perfectly,  so  that  they  should 
be  fitted  for  apprentices,  etc.  In  1578  he  was  removed  to  Balliol 
College,  Oxford,  and  in  1597  was  elected  Master  of  University 
College.  He  was  also  three  times  elected  Vice-Chancellor  of  the 
University,  so  that  his  reputation  and  influence  at  Oxford  must 
have  been  considerable.  His  erudition  was  great:  in  1604  he 
was  one  of  the  persons  appointed  for  the  new  translation  of  the 
Bible;  and  he  was  one  of  eight  to  whom  the  whole  of  the  New 
Testament,  except  the  Epistles,  was  intrusted.  In  1609,  he  was 
made  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry ;  next  year,  translated 
to  the  See  of  London ;  and  in  little  more  than  a  month,  he  was 
elevated  to  the  Archbishopric  of  Canterbury.  Two  other  sons 
of  the  poor  clothworker  were  almost  equally  fortunate  in 
advancement.  The  Archbishop's  elder  brother  and  school-fellow, 
Robert,  became  Bishop  of  Salisbury;  and  his  youngest  brother, 
Maurice,  was  an  eminent  London  merchant,  one  of  the  first 
Directors  of  the  East  India  Company,  Lord  Mayor,  and  repre 
sentative  of  the  City  in  Parliament.  Archbishop  Abbot  attended 
King  James  in  his  last  illness,  and  he  crowned  Charles  I.  "  He 
founded  a  fair  Hospital,  well  built,  and  liberally  endowed,"  at 
Guildford,  for  20  brethren  and  sisters.  He  was  also  a  munificent 


164  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

benefactor  to  the  poor  of  Guilford,  Croydon,  and  Lambeth' 
The  humble  cottage  tenement  in  which  he  was  born  exists  to 
this  day:  in  1G92  it  was  a  public-house,  with  the  sign  of  the 
Three  Mariners. 

SHAKSPEARE    AT    STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

We  have  already  spoken  of  King  Edward's  Free  Grammar 
School,  at  Birmingham ;  and,  in  the  same  county  of  Warwick, 
at  Stratford-upon-Avon,  is  a  free  grammar-school,  founded  by  a 
native  of  the  town,  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.,  and  celebrated  as 
the  School  of  Shakspeare.  Immediately  over  the  Guild  Hall  is 
the  school-room,  now  divided  into  two  chambers,  and  having  a 
low  flat  plaster  ceiling  in  place  of  the  arched  roof.  Mr.  Knight 
thus  argues  for  the  identity  of  the  room: 

•'The  only  qualifications  necessary  for  the  admission  of  a  boy  into  the  Free  Grammar 
School  of  Stratford  were,  that  he  should  be  a  resident  in  the  town,  of  seven  years  of  age. 
and  able  to  read.  The  Grammar  School  was  essentially  connected  with  the  Corporation  of 
Stratford;  and  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that,  when  the  son  of  John  Shakspeare  became 
qualified  for  admission  to  a  school  where  the  best  education  of  the  tiim-  was  given,  literally 
for  nothing,  hia  father  in  that  year  being  chief  alderman,  should  not  have  sent  him  to 
the  school." 

Thither,  it  is  held,  Shakspeare,  born  at  Stratford  in  1564, 
went  about  the  year  1571.  Mr.  Knight  impressively  continues: 

"  Assuredly  the  worthy  curate  of  the  neighboring  Tillage  of  Luddington,  Thomas  Hunt, 
who  was  also  the  schoolmaster,  would  have  received  his  new  scholar  with  some  kindness. 
As  his  '  shining  morning  face '  first  passed  out  of  the  main  street  into  that  old  court 
through  which  the  upper  room  of  learning  was  to  be  reached,  a  new  life  would  be  opening 
upon  him.  The  humble  minister  of  religion  who  was  his  first  instructor,  has  left  no  me 
morials  of  hia  talents  or  acquirements  ;  and  in  a  few  years  another  master  came  after  him, 
Thomas  Jenkins,  also  unknown  to  fame.  All  praise  and  honor  be  to  them  ;  for  it  is  impos 
sible  to  imagine  that  the  teachers  of  William  Shakspeare  were  evil  instructors,  giving  the 
boy  husks  instead  of  wholesome  aliment/' 

At  Stratford,  then,  at  the  free  Grammar  School  of  his  own 
town,  Mr.  Knight  assumes  Shakspeare  to  have  received  in  every 
just  sense  of  the  word  the  education  of  a  scholar.  This,  it  is 
true,  is  described  by  Ben  Jonson  as  "small  Latin  and  less 
Greek;"  Fuller  states  that  "his  learning  was  very  little;"  and 
Aubrey,  that  "he  understood  Latin  pretty  well."  But  the 
question  is  set  at  rest  by  "the  indisputable  fact  that  the  very 
earliest  writings  of  Shakspeare  are  imbued  with  a  spirit  of 
classical  antiquity ;  and  that  the  all-wise  nature  of  the  learning 
that  manifests  itself  in  them,  whilst  it  offers  the  best  proof  of 
his  familiarity  with  the  ancient  writers,  is  a  circumstance  which 
has  misled  those  who  never  attempted  to  dispute  the  existence 
of  the  learning  which  was  displayed  in  the  direct  pedantry  of  his 
cotemporaries."  So  that,  because  Shakspeare  uses  his  knowl 
edge  skillfully,  he  is  assumed  not  to  have  read! 


Anecdote  Biographies.  165 

To  assume  that  William  Shakspeare  did  not  stay  long  enough 
at  the  grammar-school  of  Stratford  to  obtain  a  very  fair  pro 
ficiency  in  Latin,  with  some  knowledge  of  Greek,  is  to  assume 
an  absurdity  upon  the  face  of  circumstances. 

Of  Shakspeare's  life,  immediately  after  his  quitting  Stratford, 
little  is  positively  known.  Collier  concurs  with  Malone  "in 
thinking,  that  after  Shakspeare  quitted  the  Free  School,  he  was 
employed  in  the  office  of  an  attorney.  Proofs  of  something  like 
a  legal  education  are  to  be  found  in  many  of  his  plays,  and  it 
may  safely  be  asserted  that  they  (law  phrases)  do  not  occur  any 
thing  like  so  frequently  in  the  dramatic  productions  of  any  of  his 
cotemporaries."* 

"  In  these  days,  the  education  of  the  universities  commenced  much  earlier  than  at  pres 
ent.  Boys  intended  for  the  learned  professions,  and  more  especially  for  the  church,  com 
monly  went  to  Oxford  and  Cambridge  at  eleven  or  twelve  years  of  age.  If  they  were  not 
intended  for  those  professions,  they  probably  remained  at  the  Grammar  School  till  they 
were  thirteen  or  fourteen  ;  and  then  they  were  fitted  for  being  apprenticed  to  tradesmen, 
or  articled  to  attorneys,  a  numerous  and  thriving  body  in  those  days  of  cheap  litigation. 
Many  also  went  early  to  the  Inns  of  Court,  which  were  the  universities  of  the  law,  and 
where  there  was  real  study  and  discipline  in  direct  connexion  with  the  several  societies." — 
Knight's  Life  of  Shakspeare. 

LORD    HERBERT    OF    CHERBURY,    IN    SHROPSHIRE. 

The  celebrated  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  born  1581,  in  his 
Autobiography,  thus  describes  his  early  tuition: 

"  My  Schoolmaster  in  the  house  of  my  lady  grandmother  (at  Eyton,  in  Shropshire), 
began  at  the  age  of  seven  years  to  teach  me  the  Alphabet,  and  afterwards  Grammar,  and 
other  books  commonly  read  in  schools,  in  which  I  profited  so  much,  that  upon  this  theme 
Audaces  fortuna  juvat,  I  made  an  oration  of  a  sheet  of  paper  and  50  or  60  verses  ia  the 
space  of  one  day."  .  .  . 

He  adds  that  under  Mr.  Newton,  at  Didlebury,  in  Shropshire, 
he  attained  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Greek  Tongue  and  Logic, 
in  so  much  that  at  twelve  years  old  his  parents  sent  him  to  Oxford 
to  University  College,  where  he  disputed  at  his  first  coming  in 
Logic,  and  made  in  Greek  the  exercises  required  in  that  Col 
lege,  oftener  than  in  Latin.  He  was  a  patron  of  Ben  Jonson, 
who,  in  a  complimentary  epigram,  addresses  him  as  "all-virtuous 
Herbert."  His  Life  of  Henry  VIII.  is  a  masterpiece  of 

*  The  name  "  William  Shakspere "  occurs  in  a  certificate  of  the  names  and  arms  of 
trained  soldiers  —  trained  militia,  we  should  now  call  them  — in  the  hundred  of  Barlichway, 
in  the  county  of  Warwick  —  under  the  hand  of  Sir  Fulk  Greville  ("Friend  to  Sir  Philip 
Sydney  "),  Sir  Edward  Greville,  and  Thomas  Spencer.  Was  our  William  Shakspere  a 
soldier?  Why  not?  Jonson  was  a  soldier,  and  had  slain  his  man.  Donne  had  served  in 
the  Low  Countries.  Why  not  Shakspere  in  arms  ?  At  all  events,  here  is  a  field  for  inquiry 
and  speculation.  The  date  is  September  23,  1605,  the  year  of  the  Gunpowder  Plot;  and 
the  lists  were  possibly  prepared  through  instructions  issued  by  Cecil  in  consequence  of 
secret  information  as  to  the  working  of  the  plot  in  Warwickshire  —  the  proposed  head 
quarters  of  the  insurrection  — State  Papers,  edited  by  Mary  Anne  Everett  Green. 


166  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

historic  biography,  worthy  to  rank  with  Bacon's  Life  of  Henry 
VII* 

ADMIRAL    BLAKE    AT    BRIDGWATER. 

Robert  Blake,  "Admiral  and  General  at  Sea,"  was  born  in 
1598,  at  Bridgwater,  in  a  house  of  the  Tudor  age,  which  remains 
to  this  day;  adjoining  is  the  secluded  garden,  in  which  "the 
ruddy-faced  and  curly-haired  boy,  Robert  Blake,  played  and  pon 
dered,  as  was  his  habit,  until  the  age  of  sixteen."  He  was  sent 
early  to  the  Bridgwater  Grammar  School,  which  had  been 
founded  some  five-and-forty  years  before,  and  endowed  by 
Queen  Elizabeth;  and  was  then  considered  one  of  the  best 
foundations  of  its  kind  in  England.  "At  the  Grammar  School 
he  made  some  progress  in  his  Greek  and  Latin ;  something  of 
navigation,  ship-building,  and  the  routine  of  sea  duties  he  prob 
ably  learned  from  his  father,  or  from  his  father's  factors  and 
servants.  His  own  taste,  however,  the  habit  of  his  mind,  and 
the  bent  of  his  ambition,  led  to  literature.  He  was  the  first  of 
his  race  who  had  shown  any  vocation  to  letters  and  learning, 
and  his  father,  proud  of  his  talents  and  his  studies,  resolved  that 
he  should  have  some  chance  of  rising  to  eminence.  Nor  was 
this  early  culture  thrown  away.  At  sixteen  he  was  already 
prepared  for  the  university,  and  at  his  earnest  desire  was  sent  to 
Oxford,  where  he  matriculated  as  a  member  of  St.  Alban's  Hall, 
in  1G15."  lie  removed  toWadham  College,  and  there  remained 
several  years,  took  the  usual  honors,  and  completed  his  educa 
tion  ;  and  in  the  great  dining-hall  of  Wadham  a  portrait  of  the 
Admiral  is  shown  with  pride  as  that  of  its  most  illustrious  scholar. 
Blake,  in  good  time,  took  his  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  at  Oxford ; 
he  had  read  the  best  authors  in  Greek  and  Latin,  and  wrote  the 
latter  language  sufficiently  well  for  verse  and  epigram.  Even 
in  the  busiest  days  of  his  public  life,  it  was  his  pride  not  to  for 
get  his  old  studies.! 

WALLER'S  DULLNESS. 

Edmund  Waller,  the  poet,  one  of  the  best  examples  of  poetic 
style  and  diction,  was  born  at  Coleshill,  in  Berkshire,  in  1005, 
and  was  sent  early  to  the  Grammar  School  of  Market  Wickham, 
where  he  was  said  to  be  "dull  and  slow  in  his  task."  Mr. 

*  Lord  Herbert  was  the  elder  brother  of  George  Herbert,  who  studied  foreign  languages 
in  hopes  of  rising  to  be  Secretary  of  State,  but  being  disappointed  in  his  views  at  court,  ho 
t<  ok  orders,  became  Prebend  of  Lincoln,  and  beciune  Hector  of  Iluinvrton,  near  Salisbury. 
Hi-  i-wins  were  printed  in  1635,  under  the  title  of  the  Tt mpir ;  of  which  20,000  copies 
\\rrc  sold  in  a  few  .years.  II in  best  pro?e  work  is  Tke  Country  Parson.  Lord  liacou  dedi 
cated  to  him  his  Translation  of  some  I'salins  iuto  English  verse. 

t  See  Hepworth  Dixon'a  Life  of  Blake. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  167 

Thomas  Bigge,  of  Wickham,  who  had  been  Waller's  school 
fellow,  and  of  the  same  form,  told  Aubrey,  that  "he  little  thought 
that  Waller  would  have  made  so  rare  a  poet;  for  he  was  wont 
to  make  his  exercise  for  him."  He  was  removed  at  an  un 
usually  early  age  to  King's  College,  Cambridge,  where  his  scho 
lastic  attainments  are  said  to  have  led  to  his  being  elected  mem 
ber  of  parliament  for  the  borough  of  Agmondesham  at  the  age 
of  1C;  though  this  is,  with  greater  probability,  attributed  to 
Waller's  name  and  local  influence. 

This  account  of  Waller's  dullness  at  school  is  probable;  for 
says  Mr.  Bell,  "it  clearly  indicates  the  character  of  Waller's 
genius,  which  demanded  time  and  labor  in  the  accomplishment 
of  the  smallest  results." 

Aubrey  describes  Waller's  writing  as  "a  lamentable  hand, 
as  bad  as  the  scratching  of  a  hen ;"  but  this  is  an  exaggeration, 
and  disproved  by  his  autograph,  which  is,  however,  very  rare. 

Waller  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons  before  he  was 
the  age  of  17.  He  became  (as  Bishop  Burnet  expresses  it) 
"the  delight  of  the  House,"  and,  when  old,  "said  the  liveliest 
things  of  any  among  them."  Being  present  once,  when  the 
Duke  of  Buckingham  was  paying  his  court  to  the  King,  by 
arguing  against  Revelation,  Mr.  Waller  said ;  "  My  Lord,  I  am 
a  great  deal  older  than  your  Grace ;  and  have,  I  believe,  heard 
more  arguments  for  atheism  than  ever  your  Grace  did ;  but  I 
have  lived  long  enough  to  see  there  is  nothing  in  them ;  and  so, 
1  hope  your  Grace  will."  Waller  died  in  1G87,  in  his  83rd  year. 

DR.    BUSBY,    HEAD    MASTER  OF    WESTMINSTER    SCHOOL. 

This  most  eminent  schoolmaster  of  his  time,  who  is  said  in  the 
Census  Alumnorum,  "to  have  educated  the  greatest  number  of 
learned  scholars  that  ever  adorned  at  one  time  any  age  or  nation," 
was  born  at  Luton,  in  Northamptonshire,,  in  1606.  Having 
passed  through  Westminster  School,  he  was  elected  student  of 
Christ  Church,  Oxford;  but  he  was  so  poor  that  he  received  the 
sum  of  o/.  of  the  parish  of  St.  Margaret,  to  enable  him  to  pro 
ceed  bachelor;  and  26/.  135.  4d.  to  proceed  master  of  arts;  as 
entered  in  the  Churchwarden's  accounts.  Of  this  timely  aid  he 
made  a  noble  acknowledgment  by  making  a  bequest  of  501.  to 
poor  housekeepers,  an  estate  worth  525/.,  and  in  personal  prop 
erty  nearly  5000/.,  to  St.  Margaret's  parish. 

Busby  achieved  a  great  reputation  at  Oxford,  as  an  "exact 
Latinist  and  Grecian,"  and  likewise  for  his  power  of  oratory. 
While  still  a  resident  in  the  university,  he  acted  the  part  of 
Cratander,  in  Cartwright's  Royal  Slave,  before  the  King  and 
Queen  at  Christchurch,  when  being  more  applauded  than  his 


168  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

fellow-students,  his  success  excited  in  him  so  violent  a  passion 
for  the  stage,  that  he  had  well  nigh  engaged  himself  as  an 
actor. 

In  1640  he  was  appointed  master  of  Westminster  School. 
During  the  civil  War,  though  he  was  ejected  from  his  church 
appointments,  but  was  allowed  to  retain  his  studentship  of  Christ- 
church,  and  the  chief  mastership  of  the  school, — a  tribute  to  his 
pre-eminent  qualities  as  an  instructor.  He  labored  in  his  mas 
tership  during  more  than  half  a  century;  and  by  his  diligence, 
learning,  and  assiduity,  has  become  the  proverbial  representative 
of  his  class. 

Dr.  Busby  is  said  to  have  been  not  only  witty,  learned,  and 
highly  accomplished,  but  also  modest  and  unassuming:  his 
piety  was  unaffected,  and  his  liberality  unbounded.  He  died  in 
1GD5,  and  was  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey.  His  works 
were  principally  for  the  use  of  his  school,  and  either  consist  of 
expurgated  editions  of  certain  classics  which  he  wished  his  boys 
to  read  in  a  harmless  form ;  or  grammatical  treatises,  mostly 
metrical.  There  is  a  tradition  that  some  of  these  were  the  com 
positions  of  his  scholars,  superintended  and  corrected  by  himself. 
Several  of  his  publications,  more  or  less  altered,  were  used  in 
Westminster  School  until  a  few  years  since. 

The  severity  of  Busby's  discipline  is  traditional,*  but  we  do 
not  find  that  it  was  so;  and  strange  as  it  may  appear,  no  records 
are  preserved  of  him  in  the  school  over  \vhich  he  so  long  pre 
sided.  The  charitable  intentions  of  his  will  are  carried  into 
effect  by  old  Westminsters,  who  meet  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber. 
The  picture,  by  Riley,  of  Dr.  Busby  with  one  of  his  scholars, 
said  to  be  Philip  Henry,  is  in  the  Hall  at  Christchurch ;  there 
are  also  other  portraits  of  him,  and  a  bust  of  him  by  Rysbrack ; 
all  from  a  cast  in  plaster  taken  after  death,  for  during  his  life  he 
never  would  sit  for  his  portrait.  Bagshaw  states  that  he  never 
spoilt  the  rod  by  sparing  the  child:  according  to  Dr.  Johnson, 
he  used  to  call  the  rod  his  "sieve,"  and  to  say  "whoever  did  not 
pass  through  it  was  no  boy  for  him."  Pope  thus  commemorates 
one  of  the  class: 

"  Lo !  a  specter  rose,  whose  index-hand 
Held  forth  the  virtues  of  the  dreadful  wand  : 
Ills  beaver'd  brow  a  birchin  garland  wears, 
Drooping  with  infants'  blood  and  mothers'  tears. 
O'er  every  vein  a  shudd'ring  horror  runs, — 
Eton  and  VViuton  shake  through  all  their  sons. 


*  Doubtless  transmitted  by  the  following  passage  from  Sir  Roger  do  Covcrlcy's  visit  to 
Westminster  Abbey,  in  the  Spectator: 

"  As  wo  stood  before  Dusby's  tomb,  the  knight  uttered  himself —  '  Dr.  Busby  — a  great 
man!  he  whipped  my  grandfather— a  very  great  man!  I  should  have  gone  to  him  my 
self  if  I  had  not  been  a  blockhead— a  very  great  man  !'  " 


Anecdote  Biographies.  1G9 

Alt  flesh  is  humbled  ;  Westminster's  hold  race 

Shrink  and  confess  the  genius  of  the  place  ; 

The  pale  poy  senator  yet  tingling  stand<, 

And  holds  his  garments  close  with  quiv'ring  hands." 

Nevertheless,  Busby  was  much  beloved  by  his  scholars,  as  may 
be  seen  by  letters  from  Cowley,  Dryden,  and  others.  He  is 
said  to  have  taken  especial  pains  in  preparing  his  scholars  for 
the  reception  of  the  Eucharist. 

Wood  describes  him  as  "eminent  and  exemplary  for  piety  and 
justice,  an  encourager  of  virtuous  and  forward  youth,  of  great 
learning  and  hospitality,  and  the  chief  person  that  educated  more 
youths  that  were  afterward  eminent  in  the  Church  and  State 
than  any  master  of  his  time." 

LORD  CLARENDON. 

Edward  Hyde,  Earl  of  Clarendon,  one  of  the  illustrious  men 
whose  talents  were  called  into  action  by  the  Civil  Wars,  was 
born  in  1G08,  at  Dinton,  near  Salisbury,  where  his  father  en 
joyed  a  competent  fortune.  He  was  first  instructed  at  home  by 
the  clergyman  of  the  parish,  who  was  also  a  schoolmaster;  but 
his  principal  improvement  arose  from  the  care  and  conversation 
of  his  father,  who  had  traveled  much  in  his  youth.  Edward, 
being  a  younger  son,  was  destined  for  the  church :  and  with  this 
view  was  sent  to  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  in  his  fourteenth 
year.  But  on  the  death  of  his  eldest  brother,  which  soon  after 
took  place,  his  destination  was  altered ;  and  he  was  now  design 
ed  for  the  profession  of  the  law.  He  quitted  the  University 
with  the  reputation  rather  of  talents  than  of  industry ;  and  from 
some  dangerous  habits  in  which  he  had  been  initiated,  he  after 
ward  looked  on  this  early  removal  as  not  the  least  fortunate  inci 
dent  of  his  life. 

He-  commenced  his  professional  studies  in  the  Middle  Temple, 
under  the  direction  of  his  uncle,  Sir  Nicholas  Hyde,  then  trea 
surer  of  that  Society.  His  early  legal  studies  were  impeded  by 
his  ill  health.  Nor  was  his  application  considerable  after  his 
recovery ;  he  lost  another  year  amidst  the  pleasures  of  dissipa 
tion  ;  and  when  his  dangerous  companions  had  disappeared,  he 
still  felt  little  inclination  to  immure  himself  amidst  the  records 
of  the  law.  He  was  fond  of  polite  literature,  and  particularly 
attached  to  the  Latin  classics ;  he  therefore  bestowed  only  so 
much  attention  on  his  less  agreeable  professional  studies  as  was 
sufficient  to  save  his  credit  with  his  uncle. 

Nevertheless,  Hyde,  on  his  appearance  at  the  bar,  greatly 
surpassed  the  expectations  of  his  cotemporaries :  he  had  been 
punctual  in  the  performance  of  all  those  public  exercises  to 
which  he  was  bound  by  the  rules  of  his  profession.  Meanwhile, 


170  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

he  had  been  careful  to  form  high  connections;  for  lie  had  laid  it 
down  as  a  rule  to  be  always  found  in  the  best  company;  and  to 
attain  by  every  honorable  means,  an  intimate  friend-hip  with 
the  most  considerable  persons  in  the  kingdom.  While  only  a 
student-at-law,  he  enjoyed  the  society  of  Ben  Jonson,  the  most 
celebrated  wit  of  that  age;  of  Selden,  the  most  skillful  of  all 
English  lawyers  in  the  ancient  constitution  and  history  of  his 
country;  and  of  May,  a  distinguished  scholar,  and  afterward  the 
historian  of  the  parliament.  Among  his  other  friends,  he  could 
recount  some  of  the  most  learned  and  celebrated  divines — Shel 
don,  Morley,  Earles,  Hales  of  Eton,  and  above  all  Chilling- 
worth,  whose  amiable  qualities  rendered  him  as  beloved  by  his 
friends,  as  his  controversial  talents  caused  him  to  be  feared  by 
his  antagonists:  Edmund  Waller,  who  was  not  less  admired  by 
his  cotemporaries  as  an  orator,  than  by  posterity  as  a  poet,  was 
among  Clarendon's  intimate  associates;  but  the  friend  whom  he 
regarded  with  the  most  tender  attachment,  and  the  most  unqual 
ified  admiration,  was  Sir  Lucius  Carey,  afterward  Lord  Falk 
land,  whom  he  delights  to  describe  as  the  most  accomplished 
gentleman,  scholar,  and  statesman  of  his  age.*  From  the  con 
versation  of  these  and  other  distinguished  individuals  (the  char 
acters  of  some  of  whom  he  has  admirably  sketched  in  his  works), 
Clarendon  considered  himself  to  have  derived  a  great  portion  of 
his  knowledge;  and  he  declares  that  "he  never  was  so  proud, 
or  thought  himself  so  good  a  man,  as  when  he  was  the  worst 
man  in  the  company." 

SIR    MATTHEW    ITALE's    EARLY    LIFE. 

Sir  Matthew  Hale,  the  illustrious  lawyer,  born  in  1  COO,  lost 
both  his  parents  when  he  was  but  an  infant :  he  was  educated 
under  a  clergyman  of  Puritanical  principles,  and  at  the  age  of  17 
was  sent  to  Magdalen  Hall,  Oxford,  where  he  soon  got  rid  of 
his  Puritanical  notions,  and  plunged  into  the  extreme  dissipa 
tion  of  the  college  life  of  that  period.  He  was  on  the  point  of 

*  Clarendon  says  :  TIo  (Falkland)  was  wonderfully  beloved  by  all  who  knew  him,  as  a 
man  of  excellent  parts,  of  a  wit  so  sharp,  and  a  nature  so  sincere,  that  nothing  could  be 
more  lovely. 

His  h  use  (at  Tew),  being  within  little  more  than  ten  miles  of  Oxford,  he  contracted 
familiarity  and  friendship  with  the  most  polite  and  accurate  men  at  that  university  ;  who 
found  such  an  immenscness  of  wit,  and  such  a  solidity  <  f  judgment  in  him,  so  infinite  a 
fancy,  bound  in  by  a  most  logical  ratiocination  ;  such  a  vast  knowledge,  that  he  was  not 
ignorant  in  anything ;  yet  such  an  excessive  humility,  as  if  he  had  known  nothing,  that 
they  frequently  resorted  and  dwelt  with  him.  as  in  a  college  situated  in  a  purer  air ;  so 
that  his  house  was  a  university  in  a  less  volume,  whither  they  came  not  so  much  for  re 
pose  as  study,  and  to  examine  and  refine  those  grosser  propositions,  which  laziness  and 
o  list-lit  made  «i:rrent  in  vulgar  conversation. 

He  was  superior  to  all  those  passions  and  affections  which  attend  vulgar  minds,  and  was 
guilty  of  no  other  ambition  than  of  knowledge  ;  and  to  be  reputed  a  lover  of  all  good  men. 

V  -tatue  of  this  truly  i,'reat  man  is  appropriately  placed  iu  St.  Stephen's  Hall,  iu  the 
New  Palace  at  Westminster. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  171 

becoming  a  soldier  in  the  army  of  the  Prince  of  Orange,  then 
engaged  in  the  Low  Countries,  when  accident  introduced  him 
to  Serjeant  Glanville,  who,  perceiving  the  valuable  qualities 
which  the  young  man  possessed,  persuaded  him  to  apply  himself 
exclusively  to  the  law.  Acting  upon  this  advice,  Hale  was  ad 
mitted  a  student  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  commenced  a  course  of 
study,  extending  to  sixteen  hours  every  day.  One  of  his  com 
panions  in  a  debauch  having  been  taken  suddenly  and  danger 
ously  ill,  Hale  was  so  struck  with  remorse,  that  he  gave  up  his 
intemperate  habits.  He  rose  to  be  Chief  Justice  of  the  King's 
Bench,  and  left  a  History  of  the  Common  Law ;  and  a  collec 
tion  of  valuable  MSS.,  which  he  bequeathed  to  the  library  of 
Lincoln's  Inn.  His  "  Plan  of  Instruction"  has  been  detailed 
at  p.  109. 

SAMUEL    BUTLER    AT    WORCESTER. 

Samuel  Butler,  the  most  witty  and  learned  poetical  satirist, 
was  born  at  Strensham,  in  Worcestershire,  in  1612,  and  received 
his  first  rudiments  of  learning  at  home :  he  was  afterward  sent 
to  the  College  School  at  Worcester,  then  presided  over  by  Mr. 
Henry  Bright,  prebendary  of  that  Cathedral,  whom  Dr.  Nash 
describes  as  a  "  celebrated  scholar,  and  many  years  master  of  the 
King's  school  there ;  one  who  made  his  business  his  delight ; 
and,  though  in  very  easy  circumstances,  continued  to  teach  for 
the  sake  of  doing  good,  by  benefiting  the  families  of  the  neigh 
boring  gentlemen,  who  thought  themselves  happy  in  having 
their  sons  instructad  by  him."  Butler's  father's  finances  would 
not  allow  him  to  be  matriculated  at  Cambridge,  to  which  uni 
versity  he  desired — and  his  proficiency  in  learning  entitled  him 
— to  proceed.  Accordingly  he  engaged  as  clerk  to  an  eminent 
justice  of  the  peace,  and  in  his  leisure  hours  studied  history, 
poetry,  music,  and  painting;  and  obtaining  access  to  the  Coun 
tess  of  Kent's  well-stocked  library,  he  enjoyed  the  conversation 
of  the  learned  Selden.  He  entered  afterward  into  the  service 
of  Sir  Samuel  Locke,  a  knight  of  ancient  family  in  Bedford 
shire,  who  had  been  one  of  Cromwell's  commanders,  and  is  sup 
posed  to  have  been  the  prototype  of  the  character  of  ffudibras.* 

*  Life  of  Butler  prefixed  to  Hudibras.  Bright  is  buried  in  Worcester  cathedral,  where, 
in  the  Bishop's  Chapel,  is  a  Latin  epitaph  on  him,  written  by  Dr.  Joseph  Hall,  Dean  of 
Worcester.  Dr.  Nash  adds  : — "  I  have  endeavored  to  revive  the  memory  of  this  great  and 
good  teacher,  wishing  to  excite  a  laudable  emulation  in  our  provincial  schoolmasters;  a 
race  of  men  who,  if  they  execute  their  trust  with  ability,  industry,  and  in  a  proper  man 
ner,  deserve  the  highest  honor  and  patronage  their  country  can  bestow,  as  they  have  an 
opportunity  of  communicating  learning  at  a  moderate  expense  to  the  middle  rank  of  gen 
try,  without  the  danger  of  ruining  their  fortunes,  and  corrupting  their  morals  or  their 
health." 


172  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


JEREMY  TAYLOR  AT  CAMBRIDGE. 

Jeremy  Taylor,  the  most  eloquent  and  imaginative  of  English 
divines,  and  the  Shakspeare  and  Spenser  of  our  theological 
literature,  was  born  in  1013,  and  descended  from  gentle  and 
even  heroic  blood.  His  family  had,  however,  "  fallen  into  the 
portion  of  weeds  and  outworn  faces,"  and  Jeremy's  father  was  a 
barber  in  Cambridge.  lie,  nevertheless,  put  his  son  to  college, 
as  a  sizar,  in  his  thirteenth  year,  having  himself  previously 
taught  him  the  rudiments  of  grammar  and  mathematics,  and 
given  him  the  advantages  of  the  Free  Grammar  School.  In 
1631,  Jeremy  Taylor  took  his  degree  of  B.A.  in  Caius  College, 
and  entering  into  sacred  orders,  removed  to  London,  where  his 
eloquent  lectures  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  aided  by  "  his  florid 
and  youthful  beauty  and  pleasant  air,"  procured  him  the  patron 
age  of  Archbishop  Laud.  Such  was  the  commencement  of  the 
rise  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  whose  fortunes  suffered  "  in  the  great 
storm  which  dashed  the  vessel  of  the  church  all  in  pieces,"  and 
from  his  being  in  advance  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  of 
the  ecclesiastical  system  in  which  he  had  been  reared. 

COWLEY    AT    WESTMINSTER. 

Abraham  Cowley,  whom  Milton  declared  to  be  one  of  the 
three  greatest  English  poets,  was  born  in  Fleet-street,  in  1G18.* 
He  was  sent  early  to  Westminster  School :  he  tells  us  that  he 
had  such  a  defect  in  his  memory,  as  never  to  "bring  it  to  retain 
the  ordinary  rules  of  grammar."  Bishop  Spratt  says : 

"  However,  he  supply'd  that  want  by  conversing  with  the  books  themselves  from  whence 
those  rules  had  been  drawn.  That  no  doubt  was  a  better  way.  though  much  more  diffi 
cult,  and  he  afterward  found  this  benefit  by  it,  that  having  got  the  Grttkaud  tioman  lan 
guages  as  he  had  done  his  own,  not  by  precept  but  use,  he  practiced  them,  not  as  a  scholar 
but  a  native. 

"  The  first  beginning  of  his  studios  was  a  familiarity  with  the  most  solid  and  unaffected 
Authors  of  Antiquity,  which  he  fully  digested,  not  only  in  his  memory,  but  his  judgment. 
By  this  advantage  he  learn 'd  nothing  while  a  boy,  that  he  needed  to  forget  or  forsake  when 
he  came  to  be  a  Man.  His  Mind  was  rightly  season *d  at  first,  and  he  had  nothing  to  do, 
but  still  to  proceed  on  the  same  Foundation  on  which  he  began.'' 

At  Westminster,  Cowley  "soon  obtain'd  and  increas'd  the 
noble  genius  peculiar  to  that  place."  He  wrote  his  Piramus  and 
Thisbe  when  only  ten  years  old,  and  his  Constantia  and  Philetus 
when  only  twelve.  They  were  published,  with  other  pieces,  as 
Poetical  Klossomes,  when  he  was  only  fifteen.  At  Westminster, 
too,  he  wrote  his  comedy  of  Love's  Riddles;  and  his  elegy  upon 
the  tragical  fate  of  the  two  sons  of  Sir  Thomas  Lyttleton,  drowned 
at  Oxford,  the  elder  in  attempting  to  save  the  younger,  in  1635. 
He  had  great  respect  for  his  master,  Dr.  Busby,  to  whom,  in 

*  Cowley'B  father  was  a  law-writer,  or  engrosser,  and  not  a  grocer,  as  stated  generally. 


"Anecdote  Biographies.  173 

1662,  he  presented  a  copy  of  his  two  Books  of  Plants,  with  a 
letter  couched  in  the  most  affectionate  and  respectful  terms. 
Dr.  Johnson  has  pithily  characterized  Cowley  as  '"a  man  whose 
learning  and  poetry  were  his  lowest  merits."  Cowley,  in  his 
Essay  "Of  Myself,"  says: 

"  When  I  was  a  very  young  boy  at  school,  instead  of  running  about  on  holidays,  and 
playing  with  my  fellows,  1  was  wont  to  steal  from  them,  and  walk  into  the  fields,  either 
alone  with  a  book,  or  with  some  one  companion,  if  I  could  find  any  of  the  same  temper. 
1  was  then,  too,  so  much  an  enemy  to  constraint,  that  my  masters  could  never  prevail  on 
me.  by  any  persuasions  or  encouragements,  to  learn  without  book  the  common  rules  of 
grammar,  in  which  they  dispensed  with  me  alone,  because  they  found  I  made  a  shift  to  do 
the  usual  exercise  out  of  my  own  reading  and  observation.  That  I  was  then  of  the  same 
mind  as  I  am  now  (which,  I  confess,  1  wonder  at  myself),  may  appear  at  the  latter  end  of 
an  ode  which  I  made  when  I  was  but  thirteen  years  old,  and  which  was  then  printed  with 
many  other  verses.  The  beginning  of  it  is  boyish,  but  of  part,"  adds  Cowley,  "  if  very 
little  were  corrected,  I  should  hardly  now  be  much  ashamed.  You  may  see  by  it  I  was 
even  then  acquainted  with  the  poets  (for  the  conclusion  is  taken  out  of  Horace) ;  and  per 
haps  it  was  the  immature  and  immoderate  love  of  them  which  stamped  first,  or  rather 

engraved,  the  characters  in  me." "I  believe  I  can  tell  the  particular  little 

chance  that  filled  my  head  first  with  such  chimes  of  verse,  as  have  never  since  left  ringing 
there  ;  for  I  remember  when  I  began  to  read,  and  take  some  pleasure  in  it,  there  was  wont 
to  lie  in  my  mother's  parlor  (I  know  not  by  what  accident,  for  she  never  in  her  life  read 
any  book  but  of  devotion);  but  there  was  wont  to  be  Spenser's  works ;  this  I  happened  to 
fall  upon,  and  was  infinitely  delighted  wi*h  the  stories  of  the  knights,  and  giants,  and 
monsters,  and  brave  houses,  which  I  found  everywhere  there  (though  my  understanding 
had  little  to  do  with  all  this) ;  and  by  degrees  with  the  tinkling  of  the  rhyme,  and  dance 
of  the  numbers  ;  so  that  I  think  I  had  read  him  all  over  before  I  was  twelve  years  old. 
With  these  affections  of  mind,  and  my  heart  wholly  set  upon  letters,  I  went  to  the  univer 
sity  ;  but  was  soon  torn  from  thence  by  that  public  violent  storm,  which  would  suffer 
nothing  to  stand  where  it  did,  but  rooted  up  every  plant,  even  from  the  princely 
cedar,  to  me,  the  hyssop." 

At  college  he  was  known  by  the  elegance  of  his  exercises,  and 
composed  the  greater  part  of  his  epic,  Davideis.  Before  he  was 
20  years  old,  he  laid  the  design  of  this  his  most  masculine  work, 
that  he  finished  long  after. 

JOHN  EVELYN  AT  ETON  AND  OXFORD. 

John  Evelyn,  the  perfect  model  of  an  English  gentleman  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  and  known  as  "  Sylva  Evelyn,"  from 
his  work  with  that  title,  on  Forest  Trees,  was  born  in  1620,  at 
Wotton  House,  in  the  most  picturesque  district  of  Surrey.  He 
states  in  his  Diary,  that  he  "  was  not  initiated  into  any  rudiments 
till  he  was  four  years  old,  and  then  one  Frier  taught  him  at  the 
church  porch."  When  he  was  eight  years  old,  at  which  time  he 
resided  with  his  maternal  grandmother,  he  began  to  learn  Latin 
at  Lewes,  and  was  afterward  sent  to  the  Free  School  at  South- 
over,  adjoining  Lewes.  His  father,  who  would  willingly  have 
weaned  him  from  the  fondness  of  his  grandmother,  intended  to 
place  him  at  Eton,  but  the  boy  had  been  so  terrified  by  the 
report  of  the  severe  discipline  there,  that  he  was  sent  back  to 
Lewes.  Poor  Tusser's*  account  of  Eton,  which  Evelyn 

*  Thomas  Tusser.  born  about  1523,  of  ancient  family,  was  the  author  of  the  first  didactic 
poem  in  the  language.  He  had  a  good  education,  and  commenced  life  at  Court,  uuder  the 


174  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

undoubtedly  hud  in  his  mind,  was  quite  sufficient  to  justify 
him: 

From  Pauls  I  went,  to  Efon  sent, 

To  learn  straightways  the  Latin  phrase, 

Where  fifty-three  stripes  given  to  me 

At  once  I  had ; 

For  fault  but  small,  or  none  at  all, 
It  came  to  pass,  thus  beat  1  wa- ; 
See  Udall  see,  the  mercy  of  thec 

To  me,  poor  hid  ! 

No  such  inhumanity,  we  may  be  assured,  would  be  perpetrated 
at  Eton  while  Sir  Henry  Wotton  was  provost;  and  Evelyn,  who 
says  that  he  afterward  a  thousand  times  regretted  his  perverse- 
ness,  lost  much  in  not  being  placed  under  this  admirable  man. 
In  1G3G,  he  was  admitted  into  the  Middle  Temple,  though  then 
absent  and  at  school,  whence,  however,  he  finally  removed  in  the 
following  year,  to  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  At  school  he  had 
been  very  remiss  in  his  studies  till  the  last  year,  "so  that  I  went 
to  the  university,"  he  says,  "rather  out  of  shame  of  abiding 
longer  at  school,  than  from  any  fitness,  as  by  sad  experience  I 
found,  which  put  me  to  relearn  all  I  had  neglected,  or  but 
perfunctorily  gained."  While  at  Oxford,  Evelyn  was  "admit 
ted  into  the  dancing  and  vaulting  school,"  and  began  also  to 
"look  on  the  rudiments  of  music,"  in  which,  he  says,  "he  after 
ward  arrived  to  some  formal  knowledge,  though  to  small  perfec 
tion  of  hand,  because  he  was  so  frequently  diverted  by  inclina 
tions  to  newer  trifles."  Having  quitted  the  university,  he  went 
to  London  in  1G40,  to  reside  in  the  Middle  Temple,  his  father 
having  intended  that  he  should  adopt  the  profession  of  the  law, 
which  he  denominates  an  "unpolished  study ;"  but  this  idea  he 
relinquished,  on  the  death  of  his  father.  Storing  his  mind  by 
travel  and  study,  he  entered  on  a  long  career  of  active,  useful, 
and  honorable  employment.  He  was  the  great  improver  of 
English  gardening;  his  love  of  planting,  and  the  want  of  timber 
for  the  Navy,  led  him  to  write  his  "Sylva,  a  Discourse  of 
Forest  Trees,"*  the  first  book  printed  by  order  of  the  Royal 
Society,  of  which  Evelyn  was  one  of  the  earliest  Fellows  ;  it  led 
to  the  planting  of  many  millions  of  forest-trees,  and  is  one  of 
the  very  few  books  in  the  world  which  completely  effected  what 
it  was  designed  to  do.  Another  valuable  work  by  Evelyn,  is  his 
Diary,  or  Kalendarium,  a  most  interesting  record  of  the  eventful 
times  in  which  the  writer  lived. 

patronage  of  Lord  Paget.  Afterward  he  practiced  farming  successively  at  Katwood.  in 
Suwx;  Ipswich;  Kairsted,  in  Essex  ;  Norwich,  and  other  places.  He  died  in  1580  He  is 
principally  known  by  his  poem  entitled  Ifttnfhrri  (jo  d  Points  nf  Hufban'trir,  first  pub 
lished  In  1557,  and  consisting  of  practical  diiectious  for  farming,  expressed  in  fiuiple  Terse. 

•The  best  illustration  is  to  be  seen  to  this  day  iu  the   magnificent  woods  at  Wotton 
Place. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  175 

A  short  time  before  the  publication  of  the  Memoirs  of  John  Evelyn,  in  1817,  Mr.  Upcott, 
of  the  London  Institution,  was  at  \Votton,  in  Surrey,  the  residence  of  the  Evelyn  family  ; 
and.  sitting  after  supper  with  Lady  Evelyn  and  Mrs  Molyneux,  his  attention  was  attracted 


to  a  tippet  made  of  feathers,  on  which  the  latter  was  employed.     u  Ah,  Mrs   Molyneux,  we 

ive  all  of  us  our  hobbies,''   said  Mr.  Upcott.     "Very  true,  Mr   Upcott,"  rejoined  Lady 

Evelyn,    li ami  may  1  take  the  liberty  of  asking  what  yours  is?"     "  Why  mine,  madam, 


frt'in  a  very  early  age,  has  been  the  collecting  of  the  handwriting  of  men  of  eminence.' 
"What!  I  suppose,"  Mrs  Molyneux  said,  "you  would  care  for  things  like  these ;  un 
folding  one  of  her  thread-cases,  which  was  formed  of  a  letter  written  by  Sarah,  Duchess 
of  Marlborough  "  Indeed  I  should,  very  much."  ''  Oh,  if  that  be  your  taste,"  said  Lady 
Evelyn,  "  we  can  easily  satisfy  you  This  house  is  full  of  such  matters  ;  there  is  a  whole 
clothes-basket  full  of  letters  and  other  papers  •  f  old  Mr.  Evelyn,  in  the  garret,  which  I 
was  so  tired  ef  seeing,  that  I  ordered  the  housemaid  the  other  day  to  light  the  fires  with 
them  :abut  probably  she  may  not  yet  have  done  it ."  The  bell  was  rung,  the  basket  ap 
peared  untouched,  and  the  result  was  the  publication  of  the  Memoirs  and  Diary  vf  Jukn 
Ecelyn. 

MARVELL'S  SCHOLARSHIP. 

Andrew  Marvell,  prose-writer,  poet,  and  patriot,  was  born  in 
1620,  at  Kingston-i] pon-Hull,  where  his  father  was  master  of 
the  Grammar  School.  At  the  age  of  15,  he  was  sent  to  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge.  Milton,  writing  to  Bradshawe,  in  1652, 
thus  speaks  of  Marvell's  attainments :  "  He  (Marvell)  hath 
spent  four  years  abroad  in  Holland,  France,  Italy,  and  Spain,  to 
very  good  purpose  as  I  believe,  and  the  gaining  of  those  four 
languages ;  besides,  he  is  a  scholar,  and  well  read  in  the  Latin 
and  Greek  authors,  and  no  doubt  of  an  approved  conversation, 
for  he  comes  now  lately  out  of  the  house  of  the  Lord  Fairfax, 
who  was  general,  where  he  was  intrusted  to  give  some  instruc 
tions  in  the  languages  to  the  lady  his  daughter." 

JOHN    AUBREY,    IN    WILTSHIRE. 

Aubrey,  born  in  the  parish  of  Kingston-St. -Michael,  in  1625, 
in  his  Diary,  tells  us  that  in  1633  he  "  entered  into  his  grammar 
at  the  Latin  School  at  Yatton  Keynel  (Wilts),  in  the  church, 
where  the  curate,  Mr.  Hare,  taught  the  eldest  boys  Virgil,  Ovid, 
Cicero,  etc."  Next  year  Aubrey  was  removed  to  the  adjoining 
parish  of  Leigh-de-la-Mere,  under  Mr.  Robert  Latimer,  the 
Hector,  who,  "  at  70,  wore  a  dudgeon,  with  a  knife  and  bodkin."* 
He  had  been  the  schoolmaster  of  Thomas  Hobbes,  the  philoso 
pher  of  Malmesbury.  At  these  schools  it  was  the  fashion  for 
the  boys  to  cover  their  books  with  parchment — "  old  manuscript," 
says  Aubrey,  "  which  I  was  too  young  to  understand ;  but  I  was 
pleased  with  the  elegancy  of  the  writing,  and  the  colored  initiall 
letters.'*  These  manuscripts  are  believed  to  have  been  brought 

*  Bodkin  was,  at  this  period,  a  name  for  a  small  dagger.     In  this  sense,  it  occurs  in 
Shakspeare : 

"  When  he  himself  might  his  quietus  make 

With  a  bare  bodkin."— Hamlet. 
Dudgeon  was  likewise  the  name  for  a  dagger  : 

"  It  was  a  serviceable  dudgeon 
Either  for  fighting  or  for  drudging." — Hudibras. 


176  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

from  the  Abbey  of  Malmesbury;  and  the  Rector,  "when  he 
brewed  a  barrell  of  special  ale,  his  use  was  to  stop  the  bunghole 
(under  the  clay)  with  a  sheet  of  manuscript.  lie  sayd  nothing 
did  it  so  well,  which  methought  did  grieve  me  then  to  see."  In 
1638,  Aubrey  was  "transplanted  to  Blandford  School,  in  Dor 
set,"  "  in  Mr.  Win.  Gardner's  time  the  most  eminent  school  for 
the  education  of  gentlemen  in  the  West  of  England."  Aubrey 
has  left  the  following  account  of  his  school-days  in  the  manu 
script  of  his  Lives  of  Eminent  Men,  in  the  Ashmolean  Museum, 
Oxford: 

"  When  a  boy  bred  at  Eston  (in  eremiticall  solitude),  was  very  curious,  his  greatest  de 
light  to  be  with  the  Artificers  that  came  there,  e .  g.  joyners,  carpenters,  cowpers,  masons, 
and  understood  their  trades:  Noris  vacuis,  I  drew  and  painted.  In  1634.  1  was  entred  in 
l^atin  gramer  by  Mr  R.  Latimcr,  a  delicate  and  little  person,  rector  of  Leigh-de-la-Mere, — 
a  mile  fine  walk, — who  had  an  easieway  of  teaching;  and  every  time  we  asked  leave  to  go 
forth,  we  had  a  Latin  word  from  him,  w^h  at  our  returne  we  were  to  tell  him  again:  which 
in  a  little  while  amounted  to  a  good  number  of  words.  !Twas  my  unhappinesse  in  half  a 
year  to  lose  this  good  enformer  by  his  death,  and  afterwards  was  under  severall  dull  ignor 
ant  teachers  till  12,  1038,  about  which  time  I  was  sent  to  Blandford  schoole  in  Dorset,  Mr. 
Sutton,  B.D.,  who  was  ill  natured  Here  I  recovered  my  health  and  got  my  Latin  and 
(im-ke.  Our  usher  had  (by  chance)  a  Cowper's  Dictionary,  which  I  had  never  seen  be 
fore.  I  was  then  in  Terence.  Perceiving  this  method,  I  read  nil  in  the  booke  where  Ter. 
was.  and  then  Cicero,  which  was  the  meanes  by  which  1  got  my  Latin.  'Twas  a  wonderfull 
helpe  to  my  phansio  in  reading  of  Ovid's  Metamorph.  in  English  by  Sandys,  which  made 
me  understand  Jwitin  the  better.  Also  I  mett  accidentally  a  book  of  my  mother's — Bacon's 
Essay ts— which  first  opened  my  understanding  on  the  moralls  (for  Tullies  Offices  were 
too  crabbed  for  my  young  yeares),  and  the  excellent  rlearnesse  of  the  style,  and  hints  and 
transitions."  He  also  notes:  "at  eight  I  was  a  kind  of  Engineer,  and  then  fell  to  Draw 
ing.  Copied  pictures  in  the  parlor  in  a  table  book.  Not  very  much  care  for  gram." 

THE     HON.    ROKERT    BOYLE,    A    TRUE     PATRON    AND    CULTIVA 
TOR    OF    SCIENCE. 

The  early  life  of  the  Hon.  Robert  Boyle  presents  a  remark 
able  instance  of  the  right  employment  of  wealth  and  station  to 
obtain  an  excellent  education.  He  was  born  in  1627,  and  was 
the  youngest  son  of  the  great  Earl  of  Cork.  He  tells  us  that 
his  father,  having  "  a  perfect  aversion  for  their  fondness  who  use 
to  breed  their  children  so  nice  and  tenderly  that  a  hot  sun  or  a 
good  shower  of  rain  as  much  endangers  them  as  if  they  were 
made  of  butter  or  of  sugar,"  committed  him  to  a  nurse  away 
from  home,  under  whose  care  he  formed  a  vigorous  constitution. 
He  adds,  that  at  an  early  age  he  acquired  a  habit  of  stuttering, 
from  mocking  other  children.  He  was  taught  very  young  to 
speak  both  Latin  and  French ;  and  his  studiousness  and  love  of 
truth  endeared  him  to  his  father.  At  eight  years  old  'he  was 
sent  to  Eton,  with  his  elder  brother.  Here  he  became  immod 
erately  fond  of  study  from  "the  accidental  perusal  of  Quin- 
tus  Curtius,  which  first  made  him  in  love  with  other  than  pedant 
ic  books ;"  and  the  most  effectual  mode  of  preventing  the  ill 
effects  of  reading  romance,  he  found  to  be  the  extraction  of  the 
square  and  cube  roots,  and  the  more  laborious  operations  of 


Anecdote  Biographies.  177 

algebra.  In  his  eleventh  year,  he  and  one  of  his  brothers  were 
sent  with  a  French  gentleman  to  travel  on  the  Continent,  and 
settled  at  Geneva,  where  a  thunderstorm  in  the  night  was  the  cause 
of  those  religious  impressions  which  he  retained  throughout  his 
life.  Here  Boyle  continued  some  time,  studying  rhetoric,  logic, 
and  political  geography :  and  he  cultivated  both  Hebrew  and 
Greek,  though  a  professed  hater  of  verbal  studies,  that  he  might 
read  the  original  of  the  Scriptures.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
taught  fencing  and  dancing ;  his  recreations  were  mall  and  tennis ; 
and  the  reading  of  romances,  which  "  assisted  by  a  total  discon 
tinuance  of  the  English  tongue,  in  a  short  time  taught  him  a 
skill  in  French  somewhat  unusual  to  strangers."  The  party 
afterward  set  off  for  Italy ;  at  Florence,  Boyle  made  himself 
master  of  the  Italian  language ;  and  became  acquainted  with  the 
then  recent  astronomical  discoveries  of  Galileo.  He  returned  to 
England,  and  his  father  being  dead,  he  retired  to  his  family 
estate  in  Dorsetshire,  and  there  gave  himself  up  for  five  years 
to  the  study  of  natural  philosophy  and  chemistry ;  though  he 
mentions  among  his  occupations,  essays  in  prose  and  ethics. 
"  How  few  of  the  high  born  and  wealthy  have  employed  their 
advantages  so  well  for  the  improvement  of  his  mind  as  did 
Robert  Boyle !"  From  this  time  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  appears 
to  have  been  engaged  in  study.  His  chemical  experiments  date 
from  this  period.  He  was  one  of  the  first  members  of  "  the  In 
visible  College,"  subsequently  the  Royal  Society;  and  he  was 
afterward  the  great  improver  of  the  air-pump.  It  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  he  devoted  much  of  his  fortune  to  promoting 
Christianity  in  the  East. 

JOHN    BUNYAN,  'AUTHOR    OF    "THE    PILGRIM'S    PROGRESS." 

Who  has  not  read  The  Pilgrim's  Progress?  —  "a  book,"  says 
Southey,  "  which  makes  its  way  through  the  fancy  to  the  un 
derstanding  and  the  heart :  the  child  peruses  it  with  wonder  and 
delight :  in  youth  we  discover  the  genius  which  it  displays  ;  its 
worth  is  apprehended  as  we  advance  in  years ;  and  we  perceive 
its  merits  feelingly  in  declining  age."  Lord  Macaulay  has  said 
of  Bunyan:  "though  there  were  many  clever  men  in  England 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were 
only  two  great  creative  minds.  One  of  these  minds  produced 
<  The  Paradise  Lost ;'  the  other,  <  The  Pilgrim's  Progress/  " 

John  Bunyan  was  born  in  the  village  of  Elstow,  within  a  mile 
of  Bedford,  in  the  year  1628,  in  a  cottage  which  remained  in  its 
original  state  to  our  time.  Bunyan's  descent,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "was  of  a  low  inconsiderable  generation;  my  father's 
house,"  he  says,  "  being  of  that  rank  that  is  meanest  and  most 
12 


178  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

despised  of  all  the  families  in  the  land."  *  He  was,  as  his  own 
statement  implies,  of  a  generation  of  tinkers,  and  born  and  bred 
to  that  calling,  as  his  father  had  been  before  him.f  His  parents 
had  several  other  children;  but  they  were  able  to  put  their  son 
John  to  school  in  an  age  when  very  few  of  the  poor  were  taught 
to  read  and  write.  The  boy  learnt  both,  "according  to  the  rate 
of  other  poor  men's  children,"  but  soon  lost  what  little  he  had 
been  taught,  "even,"  he  says,  "almost  utterly."  Southey  is  of 
opinion  that  Bunyan's  parents  took  some  pains  in  impressing 
him  with  a  sense  of  his  religious  duties ;  otherwise,  when,  in  hi* 
boyhood,  he  having  but  few  equals  in  cursing,  swearing,  lying, 
and  blaspheming,  he  would  not  have  been  visited  by  such  dreams 
and  such  compunctious  feelings  as  he  has  described. 

"Often,"  he  say*,  ci  after  I  had  spent  this  and  the  other  day  in  sin,  I  have  in  my  bed 
been  greatly  afflicted,  while  asleep,  with  the  apprehensions  of  devils  and  wicked  Spirit*, 
who  still,  as  I  then  thought,  labored  to  draw  me  away  with  them."  HU  waking  reflections 
were  not  less  terrible  than  these  fearful  visions  of  the  night :  and  these,  he  says,  "  when  1 
vras  but  a  child,  but  nine  or  ten  years  old,  did  so  distress  my  soul,  that  then  in  the  midst 
of  my  many  sports  and  childish  vanities,  amidst  my  vain  companions,  I  was  often  much 
«u«t  down,  and  afflicted  in  my  mind  therewith  :  yet  could  I  not  let  go  my  sins." 

lint  these  impresssions  soon  passed  away,  and  were  forgotten 
in  the  society  of  Bunyan's  village  companions :  according  to  his 
own  confession,  he  ran  headlong  into  the  boisterous  vices  which 
prove  fatal  to  so  many  of  the  ignorant  and  the  brutal.  Yet, 
though  he  became  so  far  hardened  in  profligacy,  the  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  was  not  extinguished  in  him,  and  it  shocked 
him  when  he  saw  those  who  pretended  to  be  religious  act  in  a 
manner  unworthy  of  their  profession.  Some  providential  escapes, 
during  this  part  of  his  life,  he  looked  back  upon  as  so  many 
judgments  mixed  with  mercy.  Once  he  fell  into  a  creek  of  the 
sea,  once  out  of  a  boat  into  the  river  Ouse,  near  Bedford,  and 
each  time  was  narrowly  saved  from  drowning.  One  day  an 
adder  crossed  his  path ;  he  stunned  it  with  a  stick,  then  forced 
open  its  mouth  with  a  stick,  and  plucked  out  the  tongue,  which 
he  supposed  to  be  the  sting,  with  his  fingers ;  "  by  which  act," 
he  says,  "had  not  God  been  merciful  unto  me,  I  might,  by  my 
deaperatenes?,  have  brought  myself  to  an  end."  If  this  indeed 
were  an  adder,  and  not  a  harmless  snake,  his  escape  from  the 
fangs  was  more  remarkable  than  he  was  aware  of.  A  circum 
stance  which  was  likely  to  impress  him  more  deeply,  occurred 
in  the  eighteenth  year  of  his  age,  when,  being  a  soldier  in  the 
Parliament's  army,  he  was  drawn  out  to  go  to  the  siege  of  Lei 
cester  ;  one  of  the  company  wished  to  go  in  his  stead ;  Bunyan 

•  "  Grace  abounding  to  the  Chief  of  Sinners,"  by  John  Bunyan. 

t  In  1828,  there  were  shown  at  Elstow  the  remain*  of  a  closet,  la  which  Bunyan  h.vl 
<rork«d  as  a  tinker. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  179 

consented  to  exchange  with  hirn;  and  this  volunteer  substitute, 
standing  sentinel  one  day  at  the  siege,  was  shot  through  the  head 
with  a  musket-ball. 

Bunyan,  probably  before  he  was  nineteen,  chanced  to  "  light 
upon  a  wife,"  whose  father,  as  she  often  told  him,  was  a  godly 
man :  the  young  couple  began  housekeeping  without  so  much 
as  a  dish  or  spoon;  but  Bunyan  had  his  trade,  and  she  brought 
for  her  portion  two  books  which  her  father  had  left  her  at  his 
death :  The  Plain  Man's  Pathway  to  Heaven  was  one ;  the 
other  was  Bay  ley,  Bishop  of  Bangor's  Practice  of  Piety*  These 
books  he  sometimes  read  with  her;  and  they  begat  in  him 
gome  desire  to  reform  his  vicious  life,  and  made  him  fall  in 
eagerly  with  the  religion  of  the  times,  go  to  church  twice  a-day 
with  the  foremost,  and  there  devoutly  say  and  sing  as  others 
did ; — yet,  according  to  his  own  account,  retaining  his  wicked 
life.  How  he  was  first  reclaimed  through  a  Puritan  sermon 
against  Sabbath-breaking ;  how  he  joined  a  Baptist  congregation 
in  Bedford,  arid  became  its  preacher ;  was  next  apprehended  for 
holding  "  unlawful  meetings  and  conventicles,"  and  was  impris 
oned  in  Bedford  gaol  12  J  years ;  we  have  no  space  to  tell.  His 
library,  while  in  prison,  consisted  but  of  two  books — the  Bible, 
which  he  read  intently,  and  especially  historically ;  and  Fox's 
Book  of  Martyrs,  which  copy  is  now  preserved  in  the  Bedford 
shire  General  Library.  While  in  prison,  he  wrote  several 
works,  including  The  Holy  War,  and  Grace  abounding  to  the 
Chief  of  Sinners,  a  narrative  of  his  own  life  and  religious  expe 
rience.  But  his  chief  work  is  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  from  this 
World  to  that  which  is  to  Come,  which  has  been  translated  into 
most  of  the  European  languages. 

If  it  is  not  a  well  of  English  undefined  to  which  the  poet  as  well  as  the  philologist  muct 
repair,  if  they  would  drink  of  the  living  waters,  it  is  a  clear  stream  of  current  English, 
the  vernacular  speech  of  his  age,  sometimes,  indeed,  in  its  rusticity  and  coarseness,  but 
always  in  its  plainness  and  its  strength.  To  this  natural  style  Bunyan  is  in  some  degree 
beholden  for  his  general  popularity;  his  language  is  everywhere  level  to  the  most  ignorant 
reader,  and  to  the  meanest  capacity :  there  is  a  homely  reality  about  it ;  a  nursery  tale  a 
not  more  intelligible,  in  its  manner  of  narration  to  a  child. — Soutkey. 

ISAAC    BARROW   AT   THE     CHARTER-HOUSE. 

Dr.  Isaac  Barrow,  the  eminent  mathematician  and  divine, 
was  born  in  1630,  in  the  city  of  London,  where  his  father  was 
linen-draper  to  Charles  II.  The  young  Barrow  was  first  sent 
to  the  Charter-house,  where  he  was  only  noted  for  his  idleness 
and  love  of  fighting;  he  was  on  this  account  removed  to  a  school 
at  Felstead,  in  Essex,  where  he  abandoned  his  idle  habits,  and 
studied  so  successfully,  that  his  master  made  him  a  sort  of  tutor 
to  Lord  Fairfax,  of  Ireland,  then  a  boy  in  the  same  school. 
The  fortunes  of  his  family  had  now  begun  to  suffer  for  their 


180  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

stanch  adherence  to  the  royal  cause,  and  the  young  student 
must  have  given  up  lira  career  of  learning  had  not  Dr.  Ham 
mond,  Canon  of  Christchureh,  given  him  the  means  of  complet 
ing  his  education.  He  died  1077,  aged  47. 

Few  persons  ever  attained  such  a  deserved  reputation  in  such 
various  branches  of  science  and  learning,  whose  life  was  ?o  short, 
as  the  celebrated  Isaac  Harrow.  His  sermons  will  remain  spe 
cimens  of  profound  erudition,  of  splendid  eloquence,  and  of  the 
manner  in  which  a  subject  may  be  exhausted, — so  long  as  the 
Church  of  England  and  the  English  language  exist.  For  his 
mathematical  proficiency  he  received  the  highest  honors  from 
the  University  of  Cambridge ;  and  he  was  elected  to  the  master 
ship  of  Trinity  in  1G72.  He  was  a  great  writer  of  poetry';  and 
at  one  time  studied  anatomy,  botany,  and  chemistry,  with  a  view 
to  the  practice  of  physic. 

DRYDEN    AT    WESTMINSTER    AND    OXFORD. 

John  Dryden  (or  Driden),  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of 
English  verse,  was  born  on  the  9th  of  August,  1631,  in  the 
parsonage-house  of  Oldwincle  All-Saints,  Northamptonshire. 
The  house  is  still  standing,  and  a  small  apartment  in  it  is  still 
known  as  "  Dryden's  Room."  He  received  the  rudiments  of  his 
education  at  Tichmarsh,  or  at  the  neighboring  grammar-school 
of  Oundle.  "We  boast,"  says  the  inscription  at  Tichmarsh,  on 
the  monument  erected  by  Dryden's  relative  (Mrs.  Creed),  "that 
he  was  bred  and  had  his  first  learning  here,  where  he  has  often 
made  us  happie  by  his  kind  visits  and  most  delightful  conversa 
tion."  He  was  afterward  admitted  a  King's  scholar  at  West 
minster  School,  under  Dr.  Busby,  for  whom  he  contracted  a  warm 
and  lasting  regard.  He  was  not,  however,  indifferent  to  the 
Doctor's  severity  in  the  use  of  the  rod;  for  the  poet  compares 
his  over-correction  of  some  verses  to  "our  Master  Busby,"  who 
"  used  to  whip  a  boy  so  long  till  he  made  him  a  confirmed  block 
head."  Yet  Dryden  was  so  strongly  impressed  with  Busby's 
high  moral  character  and  excellent  system  of  tuition,  that  he 
placed  two  of  his  sons  under  him.  The  Doctor  was  the  first 
to  discover  and  encourage  Dryden's  poetical  talent;  but  of  his 
performance  in  this  way  when  at  Westminster,  the  only  record 
we  have  is,  that  he  translated  the  third  Satire  of  Persius  as  a 
Thursday  night's  exercise.*  Other  pieces  of  a  similar  kind  were 
produced,  and  remained  in  the  hands  of  Dr.  Busby,  but  were 
never  recovered.  Here  also,  while  yet  a  King's  scholar,  in 

*  To  the  end  of  the  third  Satire  of  Perrius.  Drydcn  affixed  the  following  note  :  "I  re 
member  I  translated  this  satire  when  I  wai  a  King's  scholar  at  Westminster  School,  for  a 
Thursday  night's  exercise;  and  believe  that  it  and  many  other  of  my  exercises  of  thfc 
nature,  in  EuglUh  verse,  are  still  in  the  hands  of  my  learned  master,  the  Kcv.  Dr.  Buaby." 


Anecdote  Biographies.  181 

1 G49,  Dryden  wrote  an  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  Lord  Hastings, 
and  some  commendatory  verses  on  the  Divine  Epigrams  of  his 
friend,  John  Hoddesdon,  both  of  which  were  published  in  the 
following  year. 

In  the  library  at  Westminster  School  is  a  small  portion  of  a 
form  which  bears,  in  upright  letters,  the  name  I  DRYDEN, 
believed  to  have  been  cut  by  the  boy-poet  with  a  penknife:  it  is 
kept  cased  in  glass,  and  is  ornamented  with  gold  and  diamonds. 
There  was  also  within  the  present  century  to  be  seen  the  poet's 
name  written  upon  the  wall  of  a  room  in  the  Manor  House, 
Chiswick,  which  was  frequently  resorted  to  by  Busby  and  his 
pupils.  Dryden  came  up  as  a  Westminster  scholar  to  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  May  11,  1650.  Of  his  career  at  College, 
almost  the  only  notice  in  the  archives  is  dated  July  19,  1G52: 
"put  out  of  Commons  for  a  fortnight  at  least,"  confined  to  the 
walls,  and  sentenced  to  read  a  confession  of  his  crime  at  the  fel 
lows'  table  during  dinner  time — this  offense  being  disobedience 
to  the  vice-master,  and  "contumacy  in  taking  the  punishment 
inflicted  by  him."  He  took  his  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts, 
and  was  made  Master  of  Arts,  but  never  became  a  Fellow  of 
the  College ;  and  he  always  entertained  feelings  of  aversion  for 
Cambridge,  which  he  did  not  hesitate  to  avow  in  the  Prologues 
he  wrote  many  years  afterward  for  delivery  at  Oxford.  Dryden 
has  left  these  interesting  memorials  of  his  early  studies: 

"  For  my  own  part,  who  must  confess  it  to  my  shame,  that  I  never  read  anything  bufc 
for  pleasure,  history  has  always  been  the  most  delightful  entertainment  of  my  life." — Life 
of  Plutarch,  1683. 

"  I  had  read  Polybius  in  English,  with  the  pleasure  of  a  boy,  before  I  was  ten  years  of 
age."—  Character  of  Polybius,  1692. 

Hence  Dryden  is  concluded  to  have  spent  more  time  over 
Thucydides,  Tacitus,  and  the  rest  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  his 
torians,  than  he  gave  up  to  the  poets,  ancient  or  modern.  He 
cultivated  slowly  the  poetical  faculty ;  he  was  nearly  thirty  years 
of  age  before  he  published  his  poem  on  the  death  of  Cromwell ; 
and  his  early  productions  followed  each  other  at  long  intervals. 
His  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy,  elegantly  written,  is  the  earliest 
regular  work  of  the  kind  in  the  language,  and  contains  the 
manly  avowal — the  first  after  the  Restoration — of  the  suprem 
acy  of  Shakspeare.  Dryden's  language,  like  his  thoughts,  is 
truly  English :  his  verse  flows  with  natural  freedom  and  mag 
nificence  ;  his  satire  is  keen  and  trenchant ;  and  the  style  of  his 
prose  is  easy,  natural,  and  graceful.  He  was  made  Poet-Lau 
reate,  but  deprived  of  his  office  by  the  Revolution.  "The 
prose  of  Dryden,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  may  rank  with  the 
best  in  the  English  language.  It  is  no  less  of  his  own  forma- 


182  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

tion  than  his  versification ;  is  equally  spirited  and  equally  har 
monious." 

PHILIP    HENRY   AT    WESTMINSTER. 

Philip  Henry  was  born  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  1C31,  at 
Whitehall,  where  his  father  was  keeper  of  the  orchard,  and  page 
of  the  back -stairs:  in  these  situations  he  was  much  respected 
by  Charles  I.,  who  remembered  him  in  his  sad  hour  of  afllic- 
tion,  and  on  the  way  to  his  trial  took  an  affecting  leave  of  his  old 
servant.  Philip  had  for  his  sponsors  the  Earls  of  Pembroke 
and  Carlisle,  and  the  Countess  of  Salisbury;  he  became  the 
playfellow  of  the  young  princes,  and  was  kindly  noticed  by  Laud, 
for  whom,  when  he  came  to  the  palace,  Philip  used  to  open  tho 
water-gate.  He  was  sent,  first,  to  St.  Martin's  School;  then  to 
a  school  at  Battersea;  at  12  years  old  he  was  removed  to  West 
minster,  and  placed  in  the  fourth  form;  and  was  in  due  time  ad 
mitted  "  Head  into  college."  Busby  soon  took  a  great  liking  to 
the  boy,  and  employed  him,  with  other  favorite  scholars,  in  col 
lecting  materials  for  his  Greek  Grammar.  Philip  was  early 
imbued  with  Puritanical  principles  by  his  mother,  and  with  her 
used  to  attend  all  the  lectures,  which  lasted  sometimes  from  eight 
in  the  morning  till  four  in  the  afternoon.  Lord  Pembroke  still 
continued  his  patronage  to  him,  and  at  his  election  gave  him  tho 
means  of  defraying  his  first  expenses  at  the  University.  Philip 
Henry  ever  retained  a  great  affection  for  the  University,  as  well 
as  for  the  school  in  which  he  had  been  first  taught;  and  was 
wont  to  allege  as  an  excuse  for  having  been  less  studious  than 
he  should  have  been,  that,  "coming  from  Westminster  School, 
his  attainments  in  school  learning  were  beyond  what  others  gen 
erally  had  that  came  from  other  schools,  so  that  he  was  tempted 
to  think  there  was  no  need  to  keep  pace  with  others." 

SIR  CHRISTOPHER  WREN  AT  WESTMINSTER  AND  OXFORD. 

Thousands  of  the  indwellers  of  the  capital  which  Sir  Chris 
topher  Wren  has  adorned  with  no  fewer  than  forty  public  build 
ings,  are,  probably,  unacquainted  with  the  extent  and  variety  of 
the  abilities  and  acquirements  of  this  great  architect  and  excellent 
man.  Seldom  has  the  promise  of  youth  been  so  well  redeemed 
as  in  Wren.  He  was  born  in  1G.'32,  at  East  Knoyle,  in  Wiltshire, 
of  which  parish  his  father  was  then  rector.  lie  was  a  small  and 
weakly  child,  whose  rearing  required  much  care.  He  was  edu 
cated  at  home  by  his  father  and  a  private  tutor,  until  he  was 
placed  under  the  special  care  of  Dr.  Busby,  at  Westminster 
School,  having  at  the  same  time  Dr.  Holder  as  a  mathematical 
tutor.  Aubrey  describes  young  Wren  as  "a  youth  of  prodigious 


Anecdote  Biographies.  183 

inventive  wit,"  of  whom  Holder  "was  as  tender  as  if  he  had 
been  his  own  child,  who  gave  him  his  first  introductions  into 
Geometry  and  Arithmetic  ;  and  when  he  was  a  young  scholar 
at  the  University  of  Oxford,  was  a  very  necessary  and  kind 
friend."  The  first-fruits  of  young  Wren's  inventive  faculty  was 
put  forth  in  1645,  in  his  thirteenth  year,  by  the  production  of  a 
new  astronomical  instrument,  which  he  dedicated  to  his  father, 
with  a  dutiful  Latin  address,  and  eighteen  hexameter  verses. 
This  invention  was  followed  up  by  an  exercise  in  physics,  on 
the  origin  of  rivers,  and  by  the  invention  of  a  pneumatic  engine, 
and  a  peculiar  instrument  in  gnomonics.  His  mind  ripened 
early  into  maturity  and  strength ;  he  loved  the  classics ;  but 
mathematics  and  astronomy  were  from  the  first  his  favorite 
pursuits. 

In  his  fourteenth  year,  Wren  was  admitted  as  a  gentleman- 
commoner  at  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  where,  by  his  acquire 
ments  and  inventions,  he  gained  the  friendship  of  Dr.  Wilkins, 
Scth  Ward  (Bishop  of  Salisbury),  Hooke,  whom  he  assisted  in 
his  Micrographia,  and  other  eminent  scientific  men,  whose  meet 
ings  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society.  In  his  fifteenth 
year,  he  translated  Oughtred's  Geometrical  Dialing  into  Latin ; 
and  about  this  time  he  made  a  reflecting  dial  for  the  ceiling  of  a 
room,  embellished  with  figures  representing  astronomy  and 
geometry,  with  their  attributes,  tastefully  drawn  with  a  pen. 
He  next  took  out  a  patent  for  an  instrument  to  write  with  two 
pens  at  the  same  time ;  and  he  invented  a  weather-clock,  and  an 
instrument  wherewith  to  write  in  the  dark. 

In  1654,  Evelyn  visited  Oxford,  and  went  to  All-Souls,  where 
he  says,  "I  saw  that  miracle  of  a  youth,  Christopher  Wren." 
He  ranked  high  in  his  knowledge  of  anatomical  science;  he 
made  the  drawings  for  Dr.  Wilkins's  Treatise  on  the  Brain ; 
and  he  was  the  originator  of  the  physiological  experiment  of 
injecting  various  liquors  into  the  veins  of  living  animals.  In 
1653,  he  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  All-Souls  ;  and  by  the  time 
that  he  had  attained  his  twenty-fourth  year,  his  name  had  gone 
over  P^urope,  and  he  was  considered  as  one  of  that  band  of  emi 
nent  men  whose  discoveries  were  raising  the  fame  of  Knglish 
science.  In  1657,  he  was  appointed  Professor  of  Astronomy  at 
Gresham  College ;  three  years  later,  Savilian  Professor  at 
Oxford;  and  received  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  in  1661.  It  was 
after  delivering  his  lecture  on  Astronomy  at  Gresham  College, 
on  Nov.  28,  1660,  that  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  was 
discussed ;  and  its  archives  bear  the  amplest  testimony  to  his 
knowledge  and  industry,  as  exhibited  in  his  commentaries  on 
almost  every  subject  connected  with  science  and  art.  His 


184  School-Days   of  Eminent   Men. 

inventions  and  discoveries  alone  are  said  to  amount  to  fifty- 
three. 

Wren's  scientific  reputation  probably  led  to  his  being,  in  1661, 
appointed  assistant  to  Sir  John  Denham,  the  Surveyor-General ; 
and  in  1663,  he  was  commissioned  to  survey  and  report  upon 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  with  a  view  to  its  restoration,  or  rather, 
the  rebuilding  of  the  body  of  the  fabric.  The  Great  Fire 
decided  the  long-debated  question  whether  there  should  be  a  new 
cathedral.  He  was  the  worst  paid  architect  of  whom  we  have 
any  record :  his  salary  as  architect  of  St.  Paul's  was  only  200/. 
a  year ;  his  pay  for  rebuilding  the  churches  in  the  city  was  only 
100/.  a  year;  and  it  is  related  that  on  his  completion  of  the 
beautiful  church  of  St.  Stephen,  Walbrook,  the  parishoners  pre 
sented  his  wife  with  20  guineas ! 

With  all  these  architectural  pursuits,  Wren  found  time  to  pre 
side  at  the  Royal  Society,  and  take  part  in  experiments :  many 
great  men  have  shed  luster  upon  its  chair;  few  to  a  greater 
degree  than  Sir  Christopher  Wren.* 

DR.    SOUTH    AT    WESTMINSTER. 

This  celebrated  wit  and  eminent  preacher,  who  has  been  aptly 
denominated  "the  scourge  of  fanaticism,"  was  born  at  Hackney 
in  1633,  and  was  sent  early  to  Westminster  School.  Here  his 
master,  Busby,  said  of  him,  with  his  characteristic  penetration, 
"I  see  great  talents  in  that  sulky  boy,  and  1  shall  endeavor  to 
bring  them  out;"  a  work  which  he  accomplished  by  severe  dis 
cipline.  When  reader  of  the  Latin  prayers  for  the  morning, 
South  publicly  prayed  for  King  Charles  the  First  byname  "but 
an  hour  or  two  at  most  before  his  sacred  head  was  cut  off." 

In  his  Sermon  "prepared  for  delivery  at  a  solemn  meeting  of 
his  school-fellows  in  the  Abbey,"  South,  with  pride  and  satisfac 
tion,  paid  this  tribute  to  his  place  of  early  education : 

Westminster  is  a  school  which  neither  disposes  men  to  division  in  Church,  nor  sedition 
in  State,  — a  school  so  untaintcdly  loyal  that  I  can  truly  and  knowingly  arcr  that,  in  the 
worst  of  times  (in  which  it  was  my  lot  to  be  a  member  of  it)  we  really  were  King's  Scholars, 
as  well  as  calle  j  so.  And  this  loyal  genius  always  continued  amongst  us,  and  grew  up  with 
us,  which  made  that  noted  Coryphaeus  (D.  J.  Owen)  often  say,  u  that  it  would  never  be 
well  with  the  nation  until  this  school  was  suppressed. ;' 

After  South's  election  to  Christchurch,  Oxford,  he  distin 
guished  himself  by  his  classical  attainments,  and  composed  an 
elegant  Latin  poem  addressed  to  Cromwell,  on  the  conclusion  of 
the  Dutch  war :  for  this  he  was  strongly  censured,  but  he, 
probably,  regarded  his  verses  as  a  college  exercise.  He  was 
ordained  in  1659  ;  and  in  1661,  was  made  chaplain  to  the  great 

*  Weld'i  llUtory  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  i. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  185 

Lord  Clarendon,  whose  notice  he  had  attracted  by  a  speech 
delivered  at  his  investiture  as  Chancellor  of  the  University. 

The  sermons  of  this  great  man  are  the  most  enduring  monu 
ments  of  his  wit  and  learning.  Their  effect  is  abundantly 
evidenced  in  No.  125  (by  Addison)  of  the  Guardian;  and  No. 
205  (by  Fuller)  of  the  Taller;  and  in  No  6  (by  Steele)  of  the 
latter,  allusion  is  made  to  his  virtuous  life,  and  constant  attend 
ance  on  public  worship. 

South  died  in  1716,  aged  82.  His  remains  lay  for  four  days 
in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  and  were  carried  thence  into  the 
College  Hall ;  they  were  attended  to  his  grave  in  the  Abbey  by 
the  prebendaries,  masters,  and  scholars,  and  all  in  any  way  con 
nected  with  the  royal  foundation. 

When  South's  remains  lay  in  the  College  Hall,  Barber,  then 
Captain  of  the  School,  spoke  a  Latin  oration  over  the  body 
before  it  was  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey.  This  was  the 
oration,  for  the  unlicensed  printing  of  which  Curll  received  his 
well-known  castigation  from  the  Westminster  boys,  thus  related 
in  a  letter  of  the  time: — ''Being  fortunately  nabbed  within  the 
limits  of  Dean's  Yard  by  the  king's  scholars,  there  he  met  with 
a  college  salutation :  for  he  was  first  presented  with  the  ceremony 
of  the  blanket,  in  which,  when  the  skeleton  had  been  well  shook, 
he  was  carried  in  triumph  to  the  school ;  and  before  receiving  a 
grammatical  correction  for  his  false  concords,  he  was  reconduc- 
ted  to  Dean's  Yard,  and  on  his  knees  asking  pardon  of  the 
aforesaid  Mr.  Barber  for  his  offense,  he  was  kicked  out  of  the 
Yard,  and  left  to  the  huzzas  of  the  rabble." 

There  is  a  print,  in  three  compartments,  representing  the  three 
separate  punishments  which  Curll  underwent. 

BISHOP    KEN   AT    WINCHESTER. 

When  the  Wykehamists  held  their  450th  anniversary  of  the 
opening  of  Winchester  College  in  1846,  Ken  was  commemora 
ted  in  the  following  lines : 

"  In  these  cloisters  holy  Ken  strengthened  with  deeper  prayer 
His  own  and  his  dear  scholars'  souls  to  what  pure  souls  should  dare ; 
Bold  to  rebuke  enthroned  sin,  with  calm  undazzled  faith, 
Whether  amid  the  pomp  of  courts,  or  on  the  bed  of  death  ; 
1'irm  against  kingly  terror  in  his  free  country's  cause, 
Faithful  to  God's  anointed  against  a  world's  applause." 

Thomas  Ken,  son  of  an  attorney  of  Furnival's  Inn,  Holborn, 
was  born  at  Little  Berkhampstead,  in  Hertfordshire,  in  the  year 
1637.  Where  he  received  his  first  education  is  not  known ;  nor 
by  whose  recommendation  he  became  a  scholar  on  William  of 
Wykeham's  college  at  Winchester.  Ken  had  a  musical  voice, 
which  had  no  small  recommendation  for  admission  to  all  ancient 


186  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

ecclesiastical  establishments,  from  their  foundation  ;  for,'in  after 
life,  it  is  known  that  no  day  passed  without  his  singing  to  his 
lute  his  evening  and  morning  hymn,  the  origin  of  those  beauti 
ful  morning  and  evening  hymns  sung  at  this  day  by  the  children 
of  every  parish.  The  Rev.  \V.  Lisle  Bowles  thus  sketches  his 
fellow- Wykehamite  at  Winchester : 

At  the  age  of  thirteen,  the  scholastic  novitiate  at  Winchester  is  probably  placed  in  th« 
form  called  Junior  part  of  Fifth  ;  and  is  become,  with  a  band,  and  black  dangling  gown, 
a  Junior  of  Fifth  or  Sixth  Chamber. 

As  junior,  h«>  is  up  before  the  other  boys  of  the  same  chamber.  In  the  glimmering  nnd 
cold  wintry  mornings,  he  would  perhaps  repeat  to  himself — watching  the  slow  morning 
through  the  grated  window  —  one  of  the  beautiful  ancient  hymns  composed  for  tho  schol 
ars  on  the  foundation  : 

Jam  lucis  ordo  sydere 

Dcum  precemur  supplices, 
Ut  in  diurnis  actibus, 

Nos  servet  a  nocentibus. 

Now  the  star  of  morning  light 

IU.«es  on  the  rear  of  night; 

Suppliant  to  our  God  we  pray, 

From  ills  to  guard  us  through  this  day. 

Rising  before  the  others,  he  had  little  to  do  except  to  apply  a  candle  to  a  large  fagot,  In 
winter,  which  had  been  already  laid. 

On  the  fifth  or  sixth  day,  our  junior  is  at  ease  among  his  companions  of  the  came  age  : 
he  is  found,  for  the  first  time,  attempting  to  wield  a  cricket  bat;  and  when  his  hour  of 
play  is  over,  he  plies  at  his  «o6,*  the  labors  of  his  silent  lesson,  or  sits  scanning  his 
"nonsense"  verses,  which,  nonsense  as  they  have  loen  called,  have  led  tho  way  to  form 
tho  most  accurate  and  elegant  fcholars,  however  such  rudiments  may  be  derided. 

Here  cares  arc  soon  at  an  end  ;  the  holidays  are  approaching ;  and  who  more  blithely 
than  Ken,  with  his  musical  voice,  can  Ping  the  old  Wykehamical  canticle,  Dulce  Domum, 
from  its  style  judged  to  have  been  written  before  the  Reformation. 

Now  every  boy  pants  for  Whitsuntide,  when  is  sung  in  choral  glee  — 

Musa,  Ubros  mitte,  fessa, 
Mitte.  ptnsa  dura. 

Till  that  day  arrives,  after  the  "  pcnsa  dura  "  of  four  days,  the  whole  train  of  youthful 
scholars  is  §een  streaming  twice  a  week,  by  the  side  of  the  station,  toward  Catharine-hill. 
a  largo,  round,  conical  hill,  front  in  the  Downs  ;  a  scene,  eince  the  foundation  of  the  school, 
dedicated  to  youthful  recreation  and  short  oblivion  of  school  cares. 

Ken  left  "Winchester  College  for  Oxford  a  supcr-annuate 
between  eighteen  arid  nineteen  years  of  age,  !Go5-6.  As  there 
was  no  vacancy  at  New  College,  he  was  entered  at  Hart-hall, 
afterward  Hertford  College;  but  in  1657,  he  was  admitted 
Probationer  Fellow  of  New  College.  The  Puritans  were  then 
in  full  sway,  and  Ken  did  not  take  his  first  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Arts  till  1GG1 ;  he  soon  after  entered  into  Orders  ;  and  at  the 
proper  age  commencing  Master  of  Arts,  may  have  employed  his 
time  as  tutor  of  the  younger  members  of  the  college,  where,  to 
this  day,  is  pointed  out  the  room  in  which  Ken  read  and 
wrote,  and  accompanied  his  morning  aud  evening  hymn  with 
his  lute. 

In  1GGG,  Ken  being  elected  Fellow  of  Winchester,  returned 

•An  oaken  box,  which  contains  his  few  books.  On  each  Fide  are  places  for  pens  and 
ink.  The  outer  cover  is  placed  open.  The  depository  of  books  has  anothur  cover,  in 
which  the  young  scholar  writes  his  task,  or  reads  his  lesson. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  187 

thither;  and  in  1GG9,  he  was  promoted  to  a  prebendal  stall  in 
Winchester  Cathedral,  through  the  influence  of  his  brother-in- 
law,  Izaak  Walton,  with  Morley,  Bishop  of  Winchester.  He 
now  composed  his  devotional  Manual  for  the  use  of  the  Win 
chester  scholars ;  but  his  most  interesting  compositions  are  those 
affecting  and  beautiful  hymns  which  were  sung  by  himself,  and 
written  to  be  sung  in  the  chambers  of  the  boys,  before  chapel  in 
the  morning,  and  before  they  lay  down  on  their  small  boarded 
beds  at  night.  Of  Ken's  own  custom  of  singing  his  hymn  to 
the  Creator  at  the  earliest  dawn,  Hawkins,  his  biographer, 
relates,  "  that  neither  his  (Ken's)  study  might  be  the  aggressor 
on  his  hours  of  instruction,  or  what  he  judged  duty  prevent  his 
improvement,  he  strictly  accustomed  himself  to  but  one  hour's 
sleep,  which  obliged  him  to  rise  at  one  or  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  or  sometimes  earlier ;  and  he  seemed  to  go  to  rest  with 
no  other  purpose  than  the  refreshing  and  enabling  him  with  more 
vigor  and  cheerfulness  to  sing  his  Morning  Hymn,  as  he  used  to 
do,  to  his  lute,  before  he  put  on  his  clothes."  When  he  com 
posed  those  delicious  hymns,  he  was  in  the  fresh  morn  of  life ; 
and  who  does  not  feel  his  heart  in  unison  with  that  delightful 
season,  when  such  a  strain  as  this  is  heard?  — 

"Awake,  my  soul,  and  with  the  sun, 
Thy  daily  stage  of  duty  run ; 
Shake  off  dull  sloth,  and  early  rise, 
To  pay  thy  morning  sacrifice. 

*        *        #        *        #        # 

Lord,  I  my  TOWS  to  thee  renew; 
Disperse  my  Kins  as  morning  dew." 

May  we  not  also  say  that  when  the  Evening  Hymn  is  heard,  like 
the  sounds  that  bid  farewell  to  evening's  parting  plain,  it  fills 
the  silent  heart  with  devotion  and  repose : 

"All  praise  to  thee,  my  God,  this  night, 
For  all  the  blessings  of  the  light ; 
Keep  me,  oh !  keep  me,  King  of  Kings, 
Under  thine  own  Almighty  wings. 

Forgive  me,  Lord,  for  thy  dear  Son, 
The  ills  that  I  this  day  have  done; 
That,  with  the  world,  myself,  and  Thee, 
I,  ere  I  Bleep,  at  peace  may  be." 

Ken  was,  for  his  faithful  discharge  of  duty,  appointed  by 
Charles,  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells,  He  was  earnest  and 
unwearied:  he  established  many  schools,  and  wrote  his  "Expo 
sition  of  the  Church  Catechism"  for  their  use.  He  was  an 
eloquent  and  industrious  preacher,  and  James  II.  said  he  was  the 
best  among  the  Protestants.  He  was  one  of  the  Seven  Bishops 
committed  to  the  Tower  for  refusing  to  read  James's  declaration 
in  favor  of  Romanism ;  and  he  was  suspended  and  deprived  by 


188  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

William  III.  for  refusing  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance.  But 
he  found  an  asylum  in  Lord  Wcymouth's  mansion  of  Longleat, 
and  here  he  walked,  and  read,  and  hymned,  and  prayed,  and 
slept  to  do  the  same  again.  The  only  property  he  brought  from 
Wells  palace  was  his  library,  part  of  which  is  still  preserved  at 
Longleat.  In  an  upper  chamber  he  composed  most  of  his 
poems  of  fervid  piety.  lie  died  in  1711,  in  his  74th  year,  and 
was  carried  to  his  grave,  in  Frome  churchyard,  by  six  of  the 
poorest  men  of  the  parish,  and  buried  under  the  eastern  window 
of  the  church,  at  sunrise,  in  reference  to  the  words  of  his  Morn 
ing  Hymn: 

"Awake,  my  soul,  and  with,  the  5101." 

The  same  words  are  sung,  to  the  same  tune,  every  Sunday,  by 
the  parish  children,  in  the  parish  church  of  Frome,  and  over  his 
grave  who  composed  the  words,  who  sung  them  himself,  to  the 
same  air,  187  years  ago:  yet,  Ken  sleeps  in  the  churchyard 
without  an  inscription  or  name ! 

SIR  DUDLEY  NORTH HOW  HE  MADE  UP  FOR  HIS  DULLNESS 

AT  SCHOOL. 

The  history  and  habits  of  this  remarkable  man  strongly 
exemplify  the  successful  pursuit  of  business  and  philosophy  in 
one  individual. 

Sir  Dudley  North  was  born  in  1G41,  and  having  been  placed 
at  Bury,  to  learn  Latin,  "  he  made  but  an  indifferent  scholar," 
partly  through  the  severity  of  his  master,  who  used  "to  correct 
him  at  all  turns,  with  or  without  a  fault,"  till  he  was  driven 
almost  to  despair;  and  partly  to  his  having  "too  much  spirit, 
which  could  not  be  suppressed  by  conning  his  book,  but  must 
be  rather  employed  in  regular  action."  It  was  this  "backward 
ness  in  school,"  his  brother,  Roger  North,  thinks,  "  that  probably 
determined  his  destination."  "But  the  young  man  himself,"  he 
adds,  "had  a  strange  bent  to  traffic,  and,  while  he  was  at  school, 
drove  a  subtle  trade  among  the  boys  by  buying  and  selling.  In 
short,  it  was  considered  that  he  had  learning  enough  for  a  mer 
chant,  but  not  phlegm  enough  for  any  sedentary  profession." 
He  was  next  sent  to  a  writing  and  arithmetic  school  for  some 
time,  and  then  bound  by  his  lather,  Lord  North,  to  a  Turkey 
merchant.  Dudley  had,  however,  much  time  on  his  hands,  and 
he  "took  a  fancy  to  the  binding  of  books ;  and  having  procured 
a  stitching-board,  press,  and  cutter,  fell  to  work,  and  bound  up 
books  of  account  for  himself,  and  divers  for  his  friends,  in  a 
very  decent  manner.  He  had  a  distinguishing  genius  toward 
all  sorts  of  mechanic  exercises." 


Anecdote  Biographies.  189 

After  some  time,  he  was  sent  out. by  his  master  as  supercargo, 
with  an  adventure  to  Archangel,  where  he  was  to  ship  another 
cargo  for  Smyrna,  and  then  to  take  up  his  residence  in  the  latter 
place  as  factor.  In  this  trading  voyage  he  had  an  eye  for  every 
thing  worth  observing,  and  kept  a  regular  journal  of  all  that  he 
saw  and  befell  him,  which  he  transmitted  to  London,  in  letters, 
to  his  elder  brother,  Francis,  afterward  Lord  Keeper  Guildford. 
But  North  greatly  complained  of  the  idleness  in  which  he  was 
obliged  to  pass  his  time.  Having,  on  his  return  from  Archangel, 
been  detained  for  some  time  at  Leghorn,  he  visited  Florence, 
fifty-five  miles  off,  and  there  and  at  Leghorn  acquired  some 
knowledge  of  Italian.  "The  language,"  he  remarks,  "is  not 
difficult ;  and  I  find  the  little  Latin  I  have  to  be  an  extraordinary 
help  in  attaining  it." 

He  began  business  at  Smyrna,  and  thence  removed  to  Con 
stantinople,  where,  by  industry  and  perseverance,  he  became  a 
wealthy  man  ;  still  showing  the  same  inquisitiveness  and  love  of 
knowledge,  the  same  activity,  and  capacity  of  overcoming  diffi 
culties,  which  had  characterized  him  from  his  boyhood.  He  not 
only  made  himself  master  of  the  political  constitution  and  sta 
tistics  of  the  country,  but  even  acquired  such  skill  in  the  Turk 
ish  law,  that  he  tried  in  the  Turkish  courts  above  500  causes 
without  employing  interpreters,  but  speaking  for  himself.  He 
spoke  the  Turkish  language  fluently,  wrote  it  well,  and  composed 
a  Turkish  dictionary ;  and  "  no  Frank  ever  spoke  the  vulgar 
idiom  so  correct  and  perfect  as  he  did."  Upon  his  return  to 
England,  he  settled  as  a  merchant  in  London,  and  became  a 
member  of  Parliament,  a  Commissioner  of  Customs,  and  then 
a  Lord  of  the  Treasury.  Before  this  he  had  learned  Algebra, 
"a  new  kind  of  arithmetic,  which  he  had  never  heard  of 
before." 

After  the  Revolution,  he  retired  from  public  life,  returned  to 
business,  and  once  more  withdrew.  He  then  employed  himself 
in  illustrating  mechanic  powers,  which  he  sought  among  the 
engines,  tackle,  etc.,  used  in  building  St.  Paul's  Cathedral ;  Sir 
Christopher  Wren  often  giving  replies  to  his  inquiries.  In  his 
leisure,  Dudley  read  such  books  as  pleased  him  :  and  (though  he 
was  a  kind  of  dunce  at  school)  he  now  recovered  so  much  Latin 
as  to  make  him  take  pleasure  in  the  best  classics. 

One  of  North's  favorite  recreations  was  swimming  in  the  Thames.  "  He  could,"  says  his 
brother,  "live  in  the  water  an  afternoon  with  as  much  ease  as  others  walk  upon  land. 
He  shot  the  bridge  (old  London  bridge)  divers  times  at  low  water,  which  showed  him  net 
only  active,  but  intrepid ;  for  courage  is  required  to  bear  the  very  sight  of  that  tremendous 
cascade,  which  few  can  endure  to  pass  in  a  boat." 


190  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

NEWTON    AT    GHANTIIAM    AM>    CAMBRIDGE. 

The  childhood  and  education  of  that  muster-mind  which,  bj 
the  establishment  of  the  theory  of  Gravitation,  ''immortalized 
his  name,  and  perpetuated  the  intellectual  glory  of  his  country," 
next  demand  our  attention.  Isaac  Newton  was  born  in  1G42, 
in  the  manor-house  of  Woolsthorpe,  close  to  the  village  of  Col- 
sterworth,  about  six  miles  south  of  Grantham,  in  Lincolnshire. 
He  was  a  posthumous  child,  and  was  of  such  a  diminutive  size 
when  born,  that  he  might  have  been  put  into  a  quart  mug.  At 
the  usual  age  he  was  sent  to  two  small  day-schools  at  Skillington 
and  Stoke,  two  hamlets  near  Woolsthorpe,  and  here  he  was 
taught  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic.  At  the  age  of  twelve 
he  was  sent  to  the  grammar-school  at  Grantham.  According  to 
his  own  confession,  Newton  was  extremely  inattentive  to  his 
studies,  and  stood  very  low  in  the  school.  When  he  was  last  in 
the  lowermost  form  but  one,  the  boy  above  him,  as  they  were 
going  to  school,  kicked  him  on  the  stomach ;  Newton  subse 
quently  challenged  the  boy  to  fight,  the  combat  took  place  in  the 
church-yard,  and  Newton  was  the  victor ;  his  antagonist  still 
stood  above  him  in  the  form,  until,  after  many  a  severe  struggle, 
Newton  not  only  gained  the  individual  victory,  but  rose  to  the 
highest  place  in  the  school. 

Newton  had  not  long  been  at  school  before  he  exhibited  a 
taste  for  mechanical  inventions.  With  the  aid  of  little  saw?, 
hammers,  hatchets,  and  other  tools,  during  his  play-hours,  he 
constructed  models  of  known  machines  and  amusing  contrivances; 
us  a  windmill,  a  water-clock,  and  a  carriage,  to  be  moved  by  the 
person  who  sat  in  it ;  and  by  watching  the  workmen  in  erecting 
a  windmill  near  Grantham,  Newton  acquired  such  knowledge  of 
its  mechanism,  that  he  completed  a  large  working  model  of  it, 
which  was  frequently  placed  upon  the  top  of  the  house  in  which 
Newton  lived  at  Grantham,  and  was  put  in  motion  by  the  action 
of  the  wind  upon  its  sails.  Although  Newton  was  at  this  time 
a  "sober,  silent,  and  thinking  lad,"  who  never  took  part  in  the 
games  of  his  school-fellows,  but  employed  all  his  leisure  hours  in 
"knocking  and  hammering  in  his  lodging-room,"  yet  he  occasion 
ally  taught  the  boys  to  '*play  philosophically."  He  introduced 
the  flying  of  paper  kites,  and  is  said  to  have  investigated  their 
best  forms  and  proportions,  as  well  as  the  number  and  position 
of  the  points  to  which  the  string  should  be  attached.  He  con 
structed  also  lanterns  of  "crimpled  paper,"  in  which  he  placed  a 
candle  to  light  him  to  school  in  the  dark  winter  mornings ;  and 
in  dark  nights  he  tied  them  to  the  tails  of  his  kites,  which  the 
terrified  country-people  took  for  comets.  Meanwhile,  in  the 
yard  of  the  house  where  he  lived,  Newton  was  frequently 


Anecdote  Biographies.  191 

observed  to  watch  the  motion  of  the  sun  ;  he  drove  wooden  pegs 
into  the  walls  and  roofs  of  the  buildings,  as  gnomons,  to  mark 
by  their  shadows  the  hours  and  half-hours  of  the  day.  It  does 
not  appear  that  he  knew  how  to  adjust  these  lines  to  the  latitude 
of  Grantham ;  but  he  is  said  to  have  succeeded,  after  some  years' 
observation,  in  making  them  so  exact,  that  anybody  could  tell 
what  o'clock  it  was  by  Isaacs  Dial,  as  it  was  called ;  and,  prob 
ably,  about  this  time,  he  carved  two  dials  on  the  walls  of  his 
own  house  at  Woolsthorpe,  one  of  which  is  now  in  the  museum 
of  the  Royal  Society.  Newton  also  became  expert  with  his 
pencil :  his  room  was  furnished  with  pictures,  drawn,  some  from 
prints,  and  others  from  life,  in  frames  made  by  himself:  among 
the  portraits  were  several  of  the  King's  heads  ;  Dr.  Donne  ;  Mr. 
Stokes,  his  teacher  at  Grantham;  and  King  Charles  I. ;  also, 
drawings  of  "birds,  beasts,  men,  ships,  and  mathematical  dia 
grams,  executed  with  charcoal  on  the  wall,  which  remained  till 
the  house  was  pulled  down  in  1711."  Although  Newton  stated 
that  he  "excelled  particularly  in  making  verses,"  no  authentic 
specimen  of  his  poetry  has  been  preserved ;  and  in  later  years, 
he  often  expressed  a  dislike  for  poetry.  During  the  seven  years 
which  he  spent  at  Grantham,  to  the  society  of  his  school-fellows 
he  preferred  that  of  the  young  ladies  who  lived  in  the  same 
house,  and  he  often  made  little  tables,  cupboards,  etc.,  for  them 
to  set  their  dolls  and  their  trinkets  upon.  One  of  these  ladies, 
when  she  had  reached  the  age  of  82,  confessed  that  Newton  had 
been  in  love  with  her,  but  that  smallness  of  income  prevented 
their  marriage. 

When  Newton  had  reached  his  fifteenth  year,  he  was  recalled 
from  the  school  at  Grantham  to  take  charge  of  his  mother's 
farm :  he  was  thus  frequently  sent  to  Grantham  market,  to  dis 
pose  of  grain  and  other  agricultural  produce,  which,  however, 
he  generally  left  to  an  old  farm  servant  who  accompanied  him, 
and  Newton  made  his  way  to  the  garret  of  the  house  where  he 
had  lived  to  amuse  himself  with  a  parcel  of  old  books  left  there  ; 
and  afterward  he  would  intrench  himself  on  the  wayside  between 
Woolsthorpe  and  Grantham,  devouring  some  favorite  author  till 
his  companion's  return  -from  market.  And  when  his  mother 
sent  him  into  the  fields  to  watch  the  sheep  and  cattle,  he  would 
perch  himself  under  a  tree  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  or  shaping 
models  with  his  knife,  or  watching  the  movements  of  an  under 
shot  water-wheel.  One  of  the  earliest  scientific  experiments 
which  Newton  made  was  in  1658,  on  the  day  of  the  great  storm, 
when  Cromwell  died,  and  when  he  himself  had  just  entered  his 
IGth  year. 

Newton's  mother  was  now  convinced  that  her  son  was  not 


192  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

destined  to  be  a  farmer;  and  this,  with  his  uncle  finding  him 
under  a  hedge,  occupied  in  the  solution  of  a  mathematical 
problem,  led  to  his  being  again  sent  to  Grantham  School,  and 
then  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  which  thence  became  the 
real  birthplace  of  Newton's  genius.  We  have  not  space  to 
detail  how  he  mastered  Sanderson's  Logic,  and  Kepler's  Optics, 
before  he  attended  his  tutor's  lectures  upon  those  works  ;  how 
he  bought  a  book  of  Judicial  Astrology  at  Stourbridge  Fair, 
and  to  understand  its  trigonometry,  purchased  an  English  Euclid, 
which  he  soon  threw  aside  for  Descartes'  Geometry;  his  long- 
continued  observations  upon  a  comet  in  1664;  his  first  discovery 
of  Fluxions  in  1665;  his  first  study  of  Gravity,  suggested  to  him 
by  the  fall  of  an  apple  from  a  tree  while  sitting  in  his  garden  at 
Woolsthorpe ;  his  purchase  of  a  glass  prism  at  Stourbridge 
Fair;  his  first  application  to  optical  discoveries;  his  construction 
of  telescopes,*  etc.  But  we  cannot  leave  him  without  remark 
ing  that  late  in  life,  ascribing  whatever  he  had  accomplished  to 
the  effect  of  patient  and  continuous  thought  rather  than  to  any 
peculiar  genius  with  which  nature  had  endowed  him,  he  looked 
upon  himself  and  his  labors  in  a  very  different  light  from  that 
in  which  both  he  and  they  were  regarded  by  mankind.  "I 
know  not,"  he  remarked,  a  short  time  before  his  death,  "  what 
I  may  appear  to  the  world ;  but  to  myself  I  seem  to  have  been 
only  like  a  boy  playing  on  the  sea-shore,  and  diverting  myself  in 
now  and  then  finding  a  smoother  pebble  or  a  prettier  shell  than 
ordinary,  whilst  the  great  ocean  of  truth  lay  all  undiscovered 
before  me."  How  touching  is  this  sense  of  humility,  and  con 
trast  of  the  littleness  of  human  knowledge  with  the  extent  of 
human  ignorance ! 

WILLIAM    PENN   AT    OXFORD. 

William  Penn,  whose  name  has  become  "throughout  all  civil 
ized  countries  a  synonyme  for  polity  and  philanthropy,"  was 
born  October  14,  1644.  He  grew  up  into  a  graceful  and  prom 
ising  child  at  Wanstead,  in  Essex,  and  was  sent  to  learn  the 
first  rudiments  of  scholarship  at  a  grammar-school  at  Chigwell, 
then  recently  founded  by  the  Archbishop  of  York.  When  he 
was  eleven  years  old,  his  father,  Admiral  Penn,  was  ar 
rested  by  order  of  Cromwell  for  his  alleged  share  in  the  failure 
of  an  attack  on  Hispaniola;  and  young  Penn,  "a  quick-witted 
and  affectionate  child,  was  overwhelmed  with  melancholy "  at 
his  father's  arrest.  "  While  in  this  state  of  mind,  he  was  one 
day  surprised  in  his  room,  where  he  was  alone,  with  an  inward 

*  These  particulars  of  Newton's  early  years  have  been  abridged  from  Sir  David  Brews- 
tcr'a  enlarged  Life  of  the  great  philosopher. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  193 

and  sudden  sense  of  happiness,  akin  to  a  strong  religious  emo 
tion  ;  the  chamber  at  the  same  time  appearing  as  if  filled  with  a 
soft  and  holy  light."  This  incident  has  been  regarded  by  some 
as  a  miracle, — by  others  as  a  delusion;  butMr.  Hepworth  Dixon, 
the  earnest  biographer  of  Penn,  considers  the  lively  and  sensitive 
child  being  in  a  morbid  condition  of  mind,  and  his  father  being 
in  a  few  days  set  at  liberty,  "it  is  probable  that  the  glory  which  fill 
ed  the  room  and  the  feeling  which  suffused  his  frame  were  simply 
the  effects  of  a  sensitive  temperament  over-excited  by  the  glad 
tidings  of  this  release."  His  father  then  retired  with  his  family 
into  Ireland,  where  William  "  rapidly  improved,  under  a  private 
tutor  from  England,  in  useful  and  elegant  scholarship.  He  ex 
hibited  already  a  rare  aptitude  for  business.  In  person  he  was 
tall  and  slender,  but  his  limbs  were  well  knit,  and  he  had  a  pas 
sionate  fondness  for  field  sports,  boating,  and  other  manly  exer 
cises.  In  the  elementary  parts  of  education  he  had  already 
made  such  progress  that  the  Admiral  thought  him  ready  to  be 
gin  his  more  serious  studies  at  the  University;  and,  after  due 
consideration,  it  was  resolved  that  he  should  go  to  Oxford." 
After  a  year's  delay,  to  Oxford  he  went,  where  he  matriculated 
as  a  gentleman  commoner  at  Christchurch,  of  which  Dr.  John 
Owen  was  Dean  :  South  was  Orator  to  the  University;  and  here 
were  Wilmot,  Earl  of  Rochester,  and  "  the  noblest  and  most 
notable  of  all  ornaments  of  Oxford  at  that  day" — John  Locke. 
Penn  proved  at  college  a  hard  student,  a  skillful  boater,  and  ad 
venturous  sportsman ;  his  reading  was  solid  and  extensive,  and 
his  memory  excellent.  His  great  pleasure  and  recreation  while 
at  Christchurch  was  in  reading  the  doctrinal  discussions  to  which 
the  Puritan  idea  had  given  rise ;  and  the  preaching  of  the  new 
doctrines  taught  by  George  Fox,  and  the  threatened  restoration 
of  popish  usages,  led  Penn  and  others  into  forcible  opposition  to 
the  orders  of  the  Court,  for  which  they  were  expelled  the  Uni 
versity.  For  a  boy,  he  left  Oxford  with  a  profound  acquaint 
ance  with  history  and  theology.  Of  languages  he  had  more 
than  an  ordinary  share.  Then,  and  afterward,  while  at  Saumur, 
(in  France),  he  read  the  chief  writers  of  Greece  and  Italy  in 
their  native  idioms,  and  acquired  a  thorough  knowledge  of  French, 
German,  Dutch,  and  Italian.  Later  in  life  he  added  to  his  stock 
two  or  three  dialects  of  the  Red  Men.  Upon  his  return  to  Eng 
land,  Penn's  father  entered  him  as  a  student  at  Lincoln's  Inn, 
that  he  might  acquire  some  knowledge  of  his  country's  laws. 
He  did  not  remain  long  in  London,  but  returned  to  Ireland ;  and 
at  Cork,  hearing  an  old  Oxford  acquaintance  preach  the  doc 
trines  of  George  Fox,  from  that  night  Penn  became  a  Quaker 
in  his  heart. 
13 


194  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

THE  GREAT  DUKE  OF  MAKLHOKOUGII  AT  ST.  PAUL*S. 

Among  the  celebrated  Paulines  stands  prominently  the  name 
of  John  Churchill,  Duke  of  Marlborough,  the  ablest  general  and 
most  consummate  statesman  of  his  time.  lie  was  the  second 
son  of  Winston  Churchill,  and  was  born  at  Ashe  House,*  in  the 
parish  of  Musbury,  adjoining  Axeminster,  Devonshire,  in  1650. 
Part  of  the  "antient  and  gentile"  seat  remains ;  and  the  bed 
stead  upon  which  Marlborough  was  born  is  preserved  in  the 
neighborhood. 

"Of  the  education  of  a  person  afterward  so  illustrious,"  says 
Coxe,  "we  only  know  that  he  was  brought  up  under  the  care  of 
his  father,  who  was  himself  a  man  of  letters,  and  author  of  a 
political  history  of  England,  entitled  Divi  Britannici*  lie  was 
also  instructed  in  the  rudiments  of  knowledge  by  a  neighboring 
clergyman  of  great  learning  and  piety;  and  from  him,  doubtless, 
imbibed  that  due  sense  of  religion,  and  zealous  attachment  to 
the  Church  of  England,  which  were  never  obliterated  amidst  the 
dissipation  of  a  court,  the  cares  of  political  business,  or  the 
din  of  arms." 

Ho  was  next  removed  to  the  metropolis,  and  placed  in  the 
school  of  St.  Paul's,  but  for  a  short  period.  This  fact  is  thrice 
mentioned  in  the  Life  of  Dean  Colet,  the  founder  of  the  school, 
by  Dr.  Knight,  who  had  been  himself  a  scholar,  and  published 
his  work  soon  after  the  death  of  Marlborough.  lie  is  said  to 
have  imbibed  his  passion  for  a  military  life  from  the  reading  of 
Veyetius  de  re  Militari,  which  was  then  in  the  school  library. 
The  anecdote  is  thus  recorded  by  the  Rev.  George  North,  rector 
of  Colyton,  in  his  copy  of  Vegetius,  presented  to  the  Bodleian 
Library  by  the  late  Mr.  Gough: 

"From  this  very  book,  John  Churchill,  scholar  of  this  school,  afterward  the  celebrated 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  first  k-arnt  the  elements  of  the  art  of  war,  ns  was  told  to  mn,  (ieorge 
North,  ou  St  Paul's  Day,  1724-25,  by  an  old  clergyman,  who  w«id  he  wa.s  a  cotemporary 
scholar,  was  then  well  acquainted  with  him,  and  frequently  saw  him  read  it  This  I  test 
ify  to  be  true.  O.  NORT.I." 

This  tradition  is,  however,  not  thought  very  probable,  Vege 
tius  being  a  diilicult  book  for  a  boy  to  read  at  so  early  an  age, 
particularly  as  we  can  trace  no  indication  that  Marlborough  pos 
sessed  such  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  Latin  tongue  as 
the  study  of  this  author  must  have  required.  The  restless 
curiosity  of  youth  might,  however,  have  prompted  him  to  look 
into  this  book,  which  contains  some  amusing  prints,  not  unlikely 
to  attract  his  attention.! 

«  A  view  of  Ashe  House  forms  one  of  the  illustrations  to  Pulman's  Book  of  the  Axe,  a 
Tery  intelligent  and  agreeable  companion  to  that  far-famed  stream. 

t  Note  to  Coie's  Life,  by  John  Wade.     Bonn's  Edit.  1847. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  195 

Notwithstanding  he  remained  but  a  short  time  at  St.  Paul's, 
he  gave  early  indications  of  spirit  and  intelligence.  He  was 
appointed  page  of  honor  to  the  Duke  of  York,  who  asking 
Churchill  what  profession  he  preferred,  and  in  what  manner  he 
should  provide  for  him,  the  youth  threw  himself  upon  his  knees, 
and  warmly  petitioned  that  he  might  be  appointed  to  a  pair  of 
colors  in  one  of  those  fine  regiments  whose  discipline  he  had 
admired.  The  request  was  graciously  received :  the  youth  was 
gratified  with  the  colors,  and  thus  was  opened  to  "  the  hand 
some  young  Englishman  "  a  career  of  military  renown,  which 
may  almost  be  said  to  have  commenced  with  his  first  campaign. 

MATTHEW    PRIOR    AT    WESTMINSTER. 

This  celebrated  poet  was  born  about  166G,  at  Wimborne  Mins 
ter,  Dorset :  his  parents  died  when  he  was  very  young,  and  he 
was  intrusted  to  the  care  of  his  uncle,  Samuel  Prior,  who  kept 
"the  Rummer"  tavern,  between  Whitehall  and  Charing  Cross. 
At  his  uncle's  charge,  Matthew  was  sent  to  Westminster  School ; 
but  from  his  lines  to  Fleetwood  Shepheard,  the  future  poet  assist 
ed  his  uncle  in  his  business : 

My  uncle,  rest  his  soul,  when  living, 

Might  have  contriv'd  me  ways  of  thriving : 

Taught  me  with  cider  to  replenish 

My  vats,  or  ebbing  tiile  of  Rhenish. 

So  when  for  hock  I  drew  prickt  white-wine, 

Swear't  had  the  flavor,  and  was  white-wine. 

Tradition  relates  that  the  boy  was  found  in  his  uncle's  tavern 
by  the  Earl  of  Dorset,  in  the  act  of  reading  Horace.  The  Earl 
sent  the  lad  to  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was  ad 
mitted  in  1683,  and  was  next  day  appointed  a  scholar  of  that 
house,  on  the  Duchess  of  Somerset's  foundation,  by  her  own 
nomination.  In  that  year  he  contributed  some  verses  to  the 
academical  congratulations  on  the  marriage  of  the  Princess 
Anne  with  Prince  George  of  Denmark.  In  1686,  he  took  his 
degree  of  B.A.,  and  was  chosen  fellow  of  his  college;  and  in 
1688,  he  wrote  the  Ode  to  the  Deity  for  a  college  exercise.  In 
the  same  year,  he  and  Charles  Montague  produced  "The  City 
Mouse  and  the  Country  Mouse ;"  and  with  his  associate  in 
that  composition,  Prior  left  Cambridge,  and  came  up  to  London 
to  seek  his  fortune.  Late  in  life  he  collected  his  poems,  which 
he  published  with  a  dedication  to  the  Duke  of  Dorset,  in  grat 
itude  to  the  memory  of  that  nobleman's  father  —  to  whose 
timely  munificence  he  was  indebted  for  the  completion  of  his 
education. 


196  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

ADDISON    AT    LICIIFIELD,    CHARTER-HOUSE,    AND    OXFORD. 

Joseph  Addison,  one  of  our  greatest  writers  in  prose,  was 
educated  with  groat  care.  He  was  born  at  Milston,  Wilts, 
May  1,  1G72,  of  which  place  his  father  was  rector,  and  a  man 
of  considerable  learning.  He  sent  young  Joseph  to  the  school 
of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Naish,  at  Ambresbury;  but  he  was  soon  re 
moved  to  Salisbury,  under  the  care  of  Mr.  Taylor;  and  thence 
to  the  grammar-school  at  Lichfidd,  in  his  12th  year.  Dr.  John 
son  relates  a  story  of  Addison  being  here  a  ringleader  in  a  bar 
ring  out ;  which  was  told  to  Johnson,  when  he  was  a  boy,  by 
Andrew  Corbett,  of  Shropshire,  who  had  it  from  Mr.  Pigot,  his 
uncle,  Addison's  school-fellow.  There  is  also  a  tradition  that 
Addison  ran  away  from  school,  and  hid  himself  in  a  wood,  where 
he  fed  on  berries,  an-l  slept  in  a  hollow  tree,  till  after  a  long 
search  he  was  discovered  and  brought  home.  From  Lichfield, 
Addison  was  removed  to  the  Charter-house,  under  Dr.  Ellis, 
where  he  first  became  acquainted  with  his  afterward  celebrated 
trimd  Steele.  At  lo,  he  was  not  only  fit  for  the  university,  but 
carried  thither  a  classical  taste  and  a  stock  of  learning  which 
would  have  done  honor  to  a  Master  of  Arts.  lie  was  entered 
at  Queen's  College,  Oxford ;  but,  in  a  few  months,  some  of  his 
Latin  verses  falling  by  accident  into  the  hands  of  Dr.  Lancaster, 
Dean  of  Magdalen  College,  he  was  so  pleased  with  their  diction 
and  versification,  that  he  procured  for  young  Addison  admittance 
to  Magdalen,  where  he  resided  during  ten  years.  A  warm 
admirer  says:  "There  is  no  passing  through  the  cloisters  of 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  without  casting  an  eye  up  to  the 
study-window  of  Mr.  Addison,  from  whence  his  genius  first  dis 
played  itself." 

'•Adilison  was,  at  first,  one  of  those  scholars  who  are  called  Demies,  but  was  subsequently 
elected  a  fellow.  His  college  is  still  proud  of  his  name  :  his  portrait  hangs  in  the  hall ; 
and  strangers  are  still  told  that  his  favorite  walk  was  under  the  elms  which  fringe  the 
meadow  on  the  banks  of  the  Cherwcll.  It  is  said,  and  is  highly  probable,  that  he  was  dis 
tinguished  among  his  fellow-students  by  the  delicacy  of  his  feelings,  by  the  dryness  of  his 
manners,  and  by  the  assiduity  with  which  he  often  prolonged  his  studies  far  into  the  night. 
It  is  certain  that  his  reputation  for  ability  and  learning  stood  high.  Many  years  later,  the 
ancient  Doctors  of  Magdalen  continued  to  talk  in  the  common  room  of  his  boyish  compo 
sitions,  and  expressed  their  sorrow  that  no  copy  of  exercises  so  remarkable  had  been  pre 
served." 

Lord  Macaulay,  from  whose  review  of  Addison's  Life  and 
Writings  we  quote  the  above  passage,  considers  his  knowledge 
of  the  Latin  poets,  from  Lucretius  and  Catullus  down  to  Claudius 
and  Prudentius,  to  have  been  singularly  exact  and  profound,  but 
his  knowledge  of  other  provinces  of  ancient  literature  slight. 
''He  does  not  appear  to  have  attained  more  than  an  ordinary 
acquaintance  with  the  political  and  moral  writers  of  Rome,  nor 
was  his  own  Latin  prose  by  any  means  equal  to  his  Latin  verse. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  197 

His  knowledge  of  Greek,  though  doubtless  such  as  was,  in  his 
time,  thought  respectable  at  Oxford,  was  evidently  less  than 
that  which  many  lads  now  carry  away  every  year  from  Eton  and 
Rugby."  Yet  he  was  an  accomplished  scholar,  and  a  master  of 
pure  English  eloquence ;  and  a  consummate  painter  of  life  and 
manners ;  and  in  his  Tatlers,  Spectators,  and  Guardians,  he  laid 
the  foundation  of  a  new  school  of  popular  writing. 

DR.   ISAAC  WATTS HIS  SCHOOLS,  AND  EDUCATIONAL  WORKS. 

Watts  has  been  with  propriety  styled  a  classic  of  the  people. 
His  hymns  for  children  have  exercised  an  influence  on  the  minds 
of  the  young  far  beyond  the  Dissenting  body,  for  whom  they 
were  written.  His  verse  is  generally  smooth,  sometimes  ner 
vous  ;  and  the  matter  is  always  judicious,  sometimes  touching, 
sometimes  approaching  to  eloquence.  His  "Logic"  was  once  a 
text-book  at  Oxford.  He  was  an  efficient  promoter  of  charity- 
schools  ;  and  he  wrote  many  books  of  education,  from  the  simple 
hymns  for  children  to  works  upon  abstract  subjects. 

He  was  born  at  Southampton  in  1674,  where  his  father,  who 
was  a  man  of  strong  devotional  feeling,  and  a  rigid  noncon 
formist,  kept  a  boarding-school.  He  was  imprisoned  on  account 
of  his  religion,  and  during  his  confinement  his  wife  sat  on  a  stone 
at  the  prison-door,  with  little  Isaac,  then  an  infant,  at  her 
breast.  The  child  showed  a  taste  for  books  at  a  very  early  age  : 
he  was  taught  the  learned  languages  in  the  free  grammar-school 
of  Southampton  in  his  fourth  year.  The  little  money  he  received 
in  presents  he  spent  upon  books  ;  and  his  leisure  hours  he  passed 
in  reading,  instead  of  joining  the  other  boys  at  play.  When 
only  seven  or  eight  years  old,  he  composed  some  devotional 
pieces  to  please  his  mother.  His  gentle  yet  vivacious  disposi 
tion  obtained  him  friends,  who  offered  to  support  him  at  one  of 
the  universities ;  but  having  been  bred  a  nonconformist,  he 
determined  to  remain  one.  He  was,  therefore,  sent  in  his  six 
teenth  year  to  an  academy  in  London,  at  that  time  kept  by  Mr. 
Thomas  Rowe,  minister  of  an  Independent  meeting-house  at 
Haberdashers'  Hall.  He  remained  here  three  years,  pursuing 
his  studies  with  intemperate  ardor,  allowing  himself  no  time  for 
exercise,  and  curtailing  the  period  usually  allotted  to  sleep. 
He  thus  irremediably  injured  his  constitution.  He  used  to  mark 
all  the  books  he  read,  to  abridge  some  of  them,  and  annotate 
others,  which  were  interleaved  for  the  purpose.  Dr.  Johnson 
says  of  his  classical  acquirements : — "  Some  Latin  essays,  sup 
posed  to  have  been  written  as  exercises  at  his  academy,  show  a 
degree  of  knowledge,  both  philosophical  and  theological,  such  as 
very  few  attain  by  a  much  longer  course  of  study;"  and,  "in 


198  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

his  youth  he  appears  to  have  paid  attention  to  Latin  poetry :  his 
verses  to  his  brother  in  the  glyconic  measure,  written  when  he 
was  seventeen,  are  remarkably  easy  and  elegant."  He  also  made 
some  proficiency  in  the  study  of  Hebrew,  of  logic,  and  scholas 
tic  divinity.  His  acquirements  in  mathematical  and  physical 
science  appear  to  have  been  inconsiderable.  Mr.  Kowe  was 
accustomed  to  say  that  he  never  had  occasion  to  reprove  Watts, 
and  he  often  held  him  up  as  a  pattern  to  his  other  pupils. 

Watts  returned  to  his  father's  house  in  1G94,  and  spent  the 
next  two  years  of  his  life  in  private  study.  Probably  most  of 
his  juvenile  works  were  composed  during  this  time.  No  com 
positions  of  the  kind  have  obtained  such  extensive  use  as  his 
Hymns  and  Songs  for  Children.  Doddridge  relates,  in  a  letter 
to  Watts,  an  affecting  incident  regarding  one  of  his  Hymns : 

I  was  preaching  to  a  large  assembly  of  plain  country-people  at  a  village,  when,  after  a 
sermon  from  Hebrews  vi.  12,  we  sung  one  of  your  hymns  (which,  if  I  remember  right, 
was  the  140th  of  the  second  book),  and  at  that  part  of  the  worship  I  had  the  satisfaction 
to  observe  tears  in  the  eves  of  several  people  ;  after  the  service  was  over,  some  of  them 
told  me  they  were  not  able  to  ting,  so  d»-eply  were  their  minds  affected ;  and  the  clerk,  in 
particular,  said  he  could  hardly  utter  the  words  as  he  gave  them  out. 

The  Hon.  Mrs.  Norton  thus  touchingly  apostrophizes  the 
memory  of  this  excellent  man  ; 

Oh,  Watts!  gentle-hearted  old  man!  Did  you  ever  foresee  the  universal  interest  which 
would  link  itself  to  your  name  among  the  innocent  hoar's  of  earth?  Did  angels  reveal  to 
you  in  your  death-hour,  how  many  a  dying  child  would  murmur  jour  pleasant  hymns  as 
its  farewell  to  earth  .'  how  many  living  creatures  re  peat  them  as  their  most  familiar  notions 
of  prayer?  Did  you  foresee  that  in  your  native  land,  and  wherever  its  language  is  spoken, 
the  purer  and  least  sinful  portion  of  the  ever-drifting  generations  would  be  trained  with 
your  words?  And  now.  in  that  better  world  of  glory,  do  the  souls  of  young  children 
crowd  round  you  ?  Do  you  hold  sweet  converse  with  those  who,  perhaps,  were  tirst  let  into 
the  track  of  glory  by  the  faint  light  which  the  spark  of  your  soul  left  on  earth  ?  Do  they 
recognize  you,  the  souls  of  our  departed  little  ones— souls  <  f  the  children  of  the  long  ago 
dead— souls  of  the  children  of  the  living — lost  and  lamented,  and  then  fading  from  mem 
ory  like  sweet  dreams  ?  It  may  be  so  ;  and  that  when  the  great  responsible  gift  of  author 
ship  is  accounted  for,  your  crown  will  be  brighter  than  that  bestowed  upon  philosophers 
and  sages  ! 


Alexander  Pope  has  been  ably  characterized  by  his  latest 
biographer*  to  have  followed  closely  and  reverently  in  the  foot 
steps  of  Dryden,  "copying  his  subjects,  his  manner  and  versifi 
cation,  and  adding,  to  them  original  powers  of  wit,  fancy,  and 
tenderness,  and  a  brilliancy,  condensation,  and  correctness  which 
even  his  master  did  not  reach,  and  which  still  remain  unsur 
passed." 

Pope  was  born  in  London,  in  the  memorable  year  of  the 
Revolution,  1G88.  His  father  carried  on  the  business  of  a  lin 
en-merchant  in  Lombard-street:  he  was  "an  honest  merchant, 
and  dealt  in  Hollands  wholesale,"  as  his  widow  informed  Mr. 

*  Mr.  Robert  Carruthers,  in  hw  Life  of  Pope.    2nd  edit.    1857. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  199 

Spence.  The  elder  Pope  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  having  been 
successful  in  business,  when  the  Revolution  endangered  the  lives 
and  property  of  the  sect  to  which  he  belonged,  he  withdrew 
from  trade  and  the  city,  first  to  Kensington,  and  afterward  to 
Binfield,  a  skirt  of  Windsor  Forest.  The  Pope  dwelling,  a  little 
low  house,  has  been  transformed  into  a  villa ;  but  the  poet's  study 
has  been  preserved,  with  a  cypress-tree  on  the  lawn,  said  to  have 
been  planted  by  him. 

"  From  his  infancy,  Pope  was  considered  a  prodigy,"  says  Mr.  Carruthers.  u  lie  ha'l 
inherited  from  his  father  a  crooked  body,  and  from  his  mother  a  sickly  constitution,  per 
petually  subject  to  severe  headaches  ;  hence  great  care  and  tenderness  were  required  in  his 
nurture  His  faithful  nurse,  Mary  Beach,  lived  to  see  him  a  great  man;  and  when  she 
died,  in  1725.  the  poet  erected  a  stone  over  her  grave  at  Twickenham,  to  tell  that  Alexan 
der  fope,  whom  she  nursed  in  infancy,  and  affectionately  attended  for  twenty-eight  years, 
was  grateful  for  her  services  He  had  nearly  lost  his  life  when  a  child,  from  a  wild  cow, 
that  threw  him  down,  and  with  her  horns  wounded  him  in  the  throat.  He  charmed  all 
the  household  by  his  gentleness  and  sensibility,  and  in  consequence  of  the  sweetness  of  his 
voice  was  called  '  the  Little  Nightingale.'  He  was  taught  his  letters  by  an  old  aunt,  and 
ho  taught  himself  to  wrke  by  copying  from  printed  hooks.  This  art  he  retained  through 

life,  and  often  practiced  with  singular  neatness  and  proficiency His  letters  to  Henry 

Cromwell  (the  originals  of  which  still  exist),  his  letters  to  ladies,  and  his  inscriptions  in 
books  presented  to  his  friends,  are  specimens  of  fine,  clear,  and  scholar-like  penmanship." 

In  his  eighth  year  Pope  was  put  under  the  tuition  of  the 
family  priest,  who  taught  him  the  accidence  and  first  parts  of 
grammar,  by  adopting  the  measure  followed  in  the  Jesuits' 
schools  of  teaching  the  rudiments  of  Latin  and  Greek  together. 
He  then  attended  two  little  schools,  at  which  he  learned  nothing. 
The  first  of  these,  Mr.  Carruthers  considers  to  have  been  the 
Roman  Catholic  seminary,  at  Twyford,  on  the  river  Loddon, 
near  Binfield:  here  "he  wrote  a  lampoon  upon  his  master  for 
some  faults  he  had  discovered  in  him,  so  early  had  he  assumed 
the  characters  of  critic  and  satirist !"  He  was  flogged  for  the 
offense,  and  his  indulgent  father  removed  him  to  a  school  kept 
by  a  Roman  Catholic  convert  named  Deane,  who  had  a  school, 
first,  in  Marylebone,  and  afterward  at  Hyde  Park  Corner,  at 
both  which  places  Pope  was  under  his  charge. 

<k  I  began  writing  verses  of  my  own  invention,"  he  says,  "  farther  back  than  I  can  well 
remember.'1  Ogilby's  translation  of  H>mer  was  one  of  the  first  large  poems  he  read,  and, 
in  after-lite,  he  spoke  of  the  rapture  it  afforded  him.  "  I  was  then  about  eight  years  old. 
This  led  me  to  Sandy's  Ovid,  which  I  liked  extremely,  and  so  I  did  a  translation  of  a  part 
of  Statius  by  some  very  bad  hand.  When  I  was  about  twelve  I  wrote  a  kind  of  play, 
which  I  got  to  be  acted  by  my  school-fellows.  It  was  a  number  of  speeches  from  the  Iliad, 
tacked  together  with  verses  of  my  own."  Iluffhcad  says,  the  part  of  Ajax  was  performed 
by  the  master's  gardener. 

Deane  had  been  a  Fellow  of  University  College,  Oxford, 
deprived,  declared  "non  socius,"  after  the  Revolution.  Wood 
says :  "  Deane  was  a  good  tutor  in  the  College  ;"  Pope,  that  he 
was  a  bad  tutor  out  of  it,  for  he  nearly  forgot  under  him  what 
he  had  learnt  before ;  since,  on  leaving  school,  he  was  only  able, 
lie  says,  to  construe  a  little  of  Tully's  Offices. 

Pope  was  better  acquainted  with  Dryden  than  with  Cicero, 


200  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

and  his  boyish  admiration  and  curiosity  led  him  to  obtain  a  sight 
of  the  living  poet.  "I  saw  Mr.  Dryden  when  I  was  twelve 
years  of  age.  (This  must  have  been  in  the  last  year  of  Dryden's 
life.)  I  remember  his  face  well,  for  I  looked  upon  him  even 
then  with  veneration,  and  observed  him  very  particularly."  Dr. 
Johnson  finely  remarks  :  "  Who  does  not  wish  that  Dryden  could 
have  known  the  value  of  the  homage  that  was  paid  him,  and 
foreseen  the  greatness  of  his  young  admirer  ?" 

"  My  next  period,"  says  Popo,  ;-  was  in  Windsor  Forest,  where  I  sat  down  with  an  earn 
est  dc.-iro  of  reading,  and  applied  as  constantly  as  I  could  to  it  for  some  years.  I  was 
between  twelve  and  thirteen  when  I  went  thither,  and  I  continued  in  close  pursuit  of 
pleasure  and  languages  till  nineteen  or  twenty.  Considering  how  very  little  I  had  when  I 
came  from  school,  I  think  I  may  be  said  to  have  taught  myself  Latin  as  well  as  French  or 
Greek,  and  in  all  these  my  chief  way  of  getting  them  was  by  translation.''  He  afterward 
said  of  himself, 

Bred  up  at  home,  full  early  I  begun 

To  read  in  Greek  the  wrath  of  1'eleus's  son. 

This  scheme  of  self-instruction  in  the  language  of  Homer  did 
not,  however,  perfectly  succeed ;  and  we  agree  with  Mr.  Car- 
ruth<'r.s  that  Pope's  "case  may  be  held  to  support  the  argument 
in  favor  of  public  schools ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  affords  an 
animating  example  to  the  young  student  who  has  been  denied 
the  inestimable  advantage  of  early  academical  training  and  dis 
cipline." 

To  vary  the  studies,  Pope's  father  used  to  set  him  to  make 
verses,  and  he  often  sent  him  back  to  "new  turn"  them,  as  they 
were  not  "good  rhymes."  The  pupil,  however,  soon  shot  ahead 
of  his  master.  His  Ode  on  Solitude  was  written  before  the  age 
of  twelve,  his  satirical  piece  on  Elkanah  Settle  at  the  age  of 
fourteen ;  and  some  of  his  translations,  of  nearly  the  same 
period,  are  skillfully  polished  in  versification.  "Pope  as  a  ver 
sifier  was  never  a  boy,"  says  Mr.  Carruthers  :  "he  was  born  to 
refine  our  numbers,  and  to  add  the  charm  of  finished  elegance 
to  our  poetical  literature,  and  he  was  ready  for  his  mission  at  an 
age  when  most  embryo  poets  are  laboring  at  syntax,  or  strug 
gling  for  expression." 

Waller,  Spenser,  and  Dryden  were  Pope's  favorite  poets,  and 
when  a  boy,  he  said  he  could  distinguish  the  difference  between 
softness  and  sweetness  in  their  versification.  The  Eclogues  of 
Virgil  he  thought  the  sweetest  poems  in  the  world.  Pope  tells 
us  that  a  little  after  he  was  twelve  he  began  an  epic  poem, 
Alexander,  Prince  of  Rhodes,  which  occupied  him  two  years : 
the  aim  was  to  collect  all  the  beauties  of  the  great  epic  poets  in 
one  piece  ;  he  wrote  four  books  toward  it,  of  about  a  thousand 
verses  each,  and  had  the  copy  by  him  till  he  burnt  it.  His  next 
work  was  his  Pastorals  ;  and  about  this  time  he  translated  above 
a  quarter  of  the  Metamorphoses,  part  of  Statius,  and  Tully's 


Anecdote  Biographies.  201 

piece  De  Senectute.  Such  were  the  early  tastes  and  indefatiga 
ble  application  of  Pope.  None  of  his  juvenile  poems,  however, 
were  published  before  he  was  in  his  twentieth  year ;  and  they 
are  thought  to  have  been  first  carefully  corrected. 

Pope  has  himself  told  us  thut  he  "lisp'd  in  numbers."  The 
Ode  to  Solitude,  he  said,  in  a  letter  to  Cromwell,  was  written 
when  he  was  not  twelve  years  old.  Dodsley,  however,  who  was 
intimate  with  and  indebted  to  Pope,  mentioned  that  he  had  seen 
several  pieces  of  an  earlier  date, —  and  it  is  possible  that  the 
following  may  have  been  one  of  them,  although,  according  to 
the  literal  interpretation  of  the  words  of  the  poet  prefixed,  it 
must  rank  the  second  of  his  known  works.  The  copy  before  us 
is  in  that  beautiful  print  hand,  with  copying  which  Pope  all  his 
life  occasionally  amused  himself.* 

A 

PARAPHRASE  on 

Thomas  a  Kttnpis  ;  L.  3,  C.  2. 

Done  by  the  Author  at  12  years  old. 

SPEAK,  Gracious  Lord,  oh  speak  :  thy  Servant  hears  : 

For  I'm  thy  Servant,  and  I'll  still  be  so  : 
Speak  words  of  Comfort  in  my  willing  Ears ; 

And  since  my  Tongue  is  in  thy  praises  slow, 
And  since  that  thine  all  llhetorick  exceeds  ; 
Speak  thou  in  words,  but  let  me  speak  in  deeds  ! 

Nor  speak  alone,  but  give  me  grace  to  hear 

What  thy  coalestial  sweetness  does  impart ; 
Let  it  not  stop  when  entred  at  the  Ear 

But  sink,  and  take  deep  rooting  in  my  heart. 
As  the  parch/ d  Earth  drinks  Rain  (but  grace  afford) 
With  such  a  Gust  will  I  receive  thy  word. 

Nor  with  the  Israelites  shall  I  desire 

Thy  heav'nly  word  by  Moses  to  receive, 
Lest  I  should  die ;  but  Thou  who  didst  inspire 

Moses  himself,  speak  thou,  that  I  may  live. 
Rather  wirh  Samuel  I  beseech  with  tears 
Speak,  gracious  Lord,  oh  speak ;  thy  Servant  hears. 

Moses  indeed  may  say  the  words,  but  Thou 

Must  give  the  Spirit,  and  the  Life  inspire 
Our  Love  to  thee  his  fervent  Breath  may  blow, 

But  'tis  thyself  alone  can  give  the  fire ; 
Thou  without  them  may'st  speak  and  profit  too; 
But  without  thee,  what  could  the  Prophets  do? 

They  preach  the  Doctrine,  but  thou  mak'st  us  do  't ;  J 

They  teach  the  misteries  thou  dost  open  lay  ; 
The  trees  they  water,  but  thou  giv'st  the  fruit ; 

They  to  Salvation  show  the  arduous  way, 
But  none  but  you  can  give  us  Strength  to  walk  ; 
You  give  the  Practise,  they  but  give  the  Talk. 

Let  them  be  Silent  then  ;  and  thou  alone 

(My  God)  speak  comfort  to  my  ravish'd  ears  ; 
Light  of  my  eyes,  my  Consolation, 

Speak  when  thou  wilt,  for  still  thy  Servant  hears. 
What-ere  thou  speak'st,  let  this  be  understood  : 
Thy  greater  Glory,  and  my  greater  Good ! 


*From  the  Athenaeum,  No.  1394. 


202  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


JOHN    GAY    AT    BARXSTAPLK. 

This  lively  poet,  who-e  charming  Fables  are  the  best  we 
possess,  was  descended  from  an  old  Devonshire  family,  and  was 
born  at  Barnstaple,  in  1688,  as  proved  by  some  MS.  found  in  the 
secret  drawer  of  an  arm-chair  which  once  belonged  to  the  poet. 
He  was  educated  at  the  grammar-school  of  his  native  town,  and 
had  for  his  master  one  Mr.  Luck,  who  probably  fostered  though 
he  could  not  create  in  his  pupil  a  taste  for  poetry,  by  a  volume 
of  Latin  and  Knglish  poems,  which  he  published  before  he  retired 
from  the  mastership  of  the  school.  When  Gay  quitted  it,  his 
father  being  in  reduced  circumstances,  the  young  poet  was  bound 
apprentice  to  a  silk-mercer  in  the  Strand,  London;  but  he  dis 
liked  this  employment,  and  obtained  his  discharge  from  his 
•  master.  His  joy  at  this  change  may  be  traced  in  the  following 
passage  from  his  Rural  Sports,  which  he,  in  1711,  dedicated  to 
Mr.  Pope,  and  thus  established  an  acquaintance  which  ripened 
into  a  lasting  friendship : 

But  T,  who  ne'er  was  bles«ed  by  Fortune's  hand, 
Nor  brightened  ploughshares  in  paternal  land ; 
Long  in  the-  noisv  town  have  been  immured. 
Respired  its  smoke,  and  all  its  cares  endured. 
Fatigued  at  last.  ::  calm  retreat  I  chose. 
And  soothed  my  harassed  mind  with  sweet  repose, 
Where  fields,  and  shades,  and  the  refreshing  cliuic. 
Inspire  the  sylvan  song,  and  prompt  my  rhyme. 

Gay's  Fables,*  written  in  172G,  were  designed  for  the  special 
improvement  of  the  young  Duke  of  Cumberland  ;  but  the  poet 
was  meanly  rewarded,  and  his  fable  of  The  Hare  with  many 
Friends  is,  doubtless,  drawn  from  Gay's  own  experience.  He 
v,a>  equally  beloved  by  Swift  and  Pope:  the  former  called  Gay 
his  "dear  friend;"  and  the  latter  characterized  him  as  — 

Of  manners  gentle,  of  affections  mild, 
In  wit  a  man.  simplicity  a  child. 

HOW    EDMUND    STONE    TAUGHT    HIMSELF    MATHEMATICS. 

Stone  was  born  about  the  year  1700  ;  his  father  was  gardener 
to  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  who,  walking  one  day  in  his  garden, 
observed  a  Latin  copy  of  Newton's  Principia  lying  on  the  grass, 
and  thinking  it  had  been  brought  from  his  own  library,  called 
some  one  to  carry  it  back  to  its  place.  Upon  this,  Stone,  who 
was  then  in  his  eighteenth  year,  claimed  the  book  as  his  own. 
"Yours!"  replied  the  Duke;  "do  you  understand  geometry, 
Latin,  and  Newton?"  "I  know  a  little  of  them,"  replied  the 

*The  Fable?  of  Gay  were  beautifully  illustrated  by  William  Harvey,  in  1854,  and  pub 
lished  with  a  Memoir  and  Notes  by  Octavius  Freire  Owen,  M.A.,  F.S.A. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  203 

young  man.  The  Duke  was  surprised ;  and,  having  a  taste  for 
the  sciences,  conversed  witli  the  young  mathematician,  and  was 
astonished  at  the  force,  the  accuracy,  and  the  candor  of  his 
answers.  "But  how,"  said  the  Duke,  "came  you  by  the  knowl 
edge  of  all  these  things ?"  Stone  replied:  "A  servant  taught 
me  ten  years  since  to  read.  Does  one  need  to  know  anything 
more  than  the  twenty-four  letters  in  order  to  learn  everything 
else  that  one  wishes?"  The  Duke's  curiosity  redoubled:  he  sat 
down  on  a  bank,  and  requested  a  detail  of  the  whole  process  by 
which  he  had  become  so  learned. 

"I  first'learned  to  read,"  said  Stone;  "the  masons  were  then 
at  work  upon  your  house.  I  approached  them  one  day,  and 
observed  that  the  architect  used  a  rule  and  compasses,  and  that 
he  made  calculations.  I  inquired  what  might  be  the  meaning 
and  the  use  of  these  things,  and  I  was  informed  that  there  was 
a  science  called  arithmetic.  I  purchased  a  book  of  arithmetic, 
and  I  learned  it.  I  was  told  there  was  another  science  called 
geometry  ;  I  bought  the  necessary  books  and  I  learned  geometry. 
By  reading,  I  found  that  there  were  good  books  of  these  two 
sciences  in  Latin ;  I  bought  a  dictionary,  and  I  learned  Latin. 
I  understood  also  that  there  were  good  books  of  the  same  kind 
in  French ;  I  bought  a  dictionary,  and  I  learned  French.  And 
this,  my  Lord,  is  what  I  have  done :  it  seems  to  me  that  we  may 
learn  everything  when  we  know  the  twenty-four  letters  of  the 
alphabet." 

Under  the  patronage  of  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  Stone,  some 
years  afterward,  published  in  London  a  Treatise  on  Mathemat 
ical  Instruments,  and  a  Mathematical  Dictionary,  was  chosen 
a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  became  a  distinguished  man 
of  science. 

JOHN    WESLEY    AT    THE    CHARTER-HOUSE    AND    OXFORD. 

The  founder  of  the  Methodists,  John  Wesley,  was  the  second, 
or  the  second  who  grew  up  to  manhood,  of  the  sons  of  the  Rev. 
Samuel  "Wesley,  of  Epworth,  Lincolnshire,  and  was  born  there 
in  (O.  S.)  1703.*  When  in  his  sixth  year,  he  nearly  lost  his 
life  in  a  h're  which  consumed  his  father's  parsonage ;  and  John 
remembered  this  providential  deliverance  through  life  with  the 

*  Samuel,  the  eldest  son,  was  first  under-master  of  Westminster  School  afterward  head 
of  a  free-school  at  Tiverton.  The  third  son,  Charles,  was  at  Westminster  School,  when  an 
Irish  gentleman,  Garrett  Wellesly  (or  Wesley),  Esq.,  of  Dunganon,  M.P.,  considering  the 
boy  of  his  own  family,  offered  to  make  him  his  heir  if  he  would  consent  to  go  with  him  to 
Ireland.  The  young  man,  who  was  just  chosen  student  of  Christchurch  from  Westmins 
ter  School,  preferred  his  projects  there  to  a  life  of  dependence  on  a  stranger;  and  the  favor 
of  hia  namesake  was  in  consequence  transferred,  and  his  fortune  bequcthed,  to  Kichard, 
second  son  of  Sir  Henry  Colley,  who  assumed  the  name  of  Wellesley,  was  afterward  Earl  of 
ilornington,  and  was  grandfather  of  the  Marquis  Wellesley  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 


204  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

deepest  gratitude.  In  reference  to  it,  he  had  :i  house  in  flames 
engraved  as  an  emblem  under  one  of  his  portraits,  with  these 
words  for  the  motto,  ''Is  not  this  a  brand  plucked  out  of  the 
burning?"  Peculiar  care  was  taken  of  his  religious  education 
by  his  mother,  which,  with  the  habitual  and  fervent  piety  of  both 
his  parents,  and  his  o\vn  surprising  preservation,  at  an  age  when 
he  was  perfectly  capable  of  remembering  all  the  circumstances, 
combined  to  foster  in  the  child  that  disposition  which  afterward 
developed  itself  with  such  force,  and  produced  such  important 
effects. 

At  an  early  age  John  was  sent  to  the  Charter-house,  where  he 
suffered  under  the  tyranny  which  the  elder  boys  were  permitted 
to  exercise.  The  boys  of  the  higher  forms  were  then  in  the 
practice  of  taking  their  portion  of  meat  from  the  younger  ones, 
by  the  law  of  the  strongest;  and  during  great  part  of  the  time 
that  Wesley  remained  there,  a  small  daily  portion  of  bread  was 
his  only  food.  He  strictly  performed  an  injunction  of  his  father's, 
that  he  should  run  round  the  Charter-house  green  three  times 
every  morning.  Here,  for  his  quietness,  regularity,  and  applica 
tion  he  became  a  favorite  with  the  master,  Dr.  Walker ;  and 
through  life  he  retained  so  great  a  predilection  for  the  place, 
that  on  his  annual  visit  to  London,  he  made  it  a  custom  to  walk 
through  the  scene  of  his  boyhood. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen,  Wesley  proceeded  to  Christchurch. 
Oxford.  He  had  previously  acquired  some  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
under  his  brother  Samuel's  tuition.  At  college  he  continued  his 
studies  with  all  diligence,  and  was  noticed  there  for  his  attain 
ments,  and  especially  for  his  skill  in  logic ;  no  man,  indeed,  was 
ever  more  dextrous  in  the  art  of  reasoning.  He  was  no  inex 
pert  versifier,  and  at  one  time  seemed  likely  to  have  found  his 
vent  in  poetry.  When  he  was  an  imder-graduate,  his  manners 
were  free  and  cheerful ;  and  his  active  disposition  displayed  it 
self  in  wit  and  vivacity.  As,  however,  he  was  destined  by  the 
wishes  of  his  family,  and  the  situation  which  he  held  in  the  uni 
versity,  to  become  a  candidate  for  orders,  his  parents  directed 
his  attention  to  the  studies  which  concerned  his  profession,  and 
more  particularly  to  books  of  a  devotional  spirit.  Among  the 
works  which  he  read  in  this  preparation  were  the  famous  treatise 
De  Imitatione  Christi,  ascribed  to  Thomas  a  Kempis;  but  the 
impression  which  this  writer  failed  to  make,  was  produced  by 
the  work  of  a  far  more  powerful  intellect,  and  an  imagination 
infinitely  more  fervent — Jeremy  Taylor's  Rules  of  Holy  Living 
and  Dying.  Wesley  now  got  rid  of  all  his  acquaintances  whose 
conversation  he  did  not  think  likely  to  promote  his  spiritual  im 
provement.  In  1725,  he  was  ordained;  and  in  the  following 
spring  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Lincoln  College. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  205 

From  this  time  Wesley  began  to  keep  a  diary,  in  which  he 
conveys  a  lively  picture  of  himself;  registering  not  only  his  pro 
ceedings,  but  his  thoughts,  his  studies,  and  his  remarks  upon 
men  and  books,  and  miscellaneous  subjects,  with  a  vivacity 
which  characterized  him  to  the  last.  He  was  next  apppointed 
Moderator  of  the  Logical  Disputations  and  Greek  Lecturer. 
He  now  formed  for  himself  a  scheme  of  studies:  Mondays  and 
Tuesdays  were  allotted  for  the  classics ;  Wednesdays  to  logic 
and  ethics  ;  Thursdays  to  Hebrew  and  Arabic;  Fridays  to  meta 
physics  and  natural  philosophy;  Saturdays  to  oratory  and  poetry, 
but  chiefly  to  composition  in  those  arts ;  and  the  Sabbath  to  di 
vinity.  It  appears  by  his  diary,  also,  that  he  gave  great  atten 
tion  to  mathematics.  Full  of  business  as  he  now  was,  he  found 
time  for  writing  by  rising  an  hour  earlier  in  the  morning,  and  going 
into  company  an  hour  later  in  the  evening.  At  the  desire  of 
his  father,  he  next  resided  at  Wroote,  one  of  his  livings;  he 
officiated  there  for  two  years  as  his  curate,  and  obtained  priests' 
orders. 

He  now  returned  to  take  up  his  abode  at  Lincoln  College, 
became  a  tutor  there,  and  presided  as  Moderator  at  the  Disputa 
tions.  At  this  time  a  decided  color  was  given  to  Wesley's  des 
tiny,  and  the  foundation  laid  of  Methodism.  During  his  absence 
at  Wroote,  his  younger  brother,  Charles,  had  drawn  together  in 
Oxford  a  small  society  of  young  men,  of  similar  views,  who  re 
ceived  the  sacrament  weekly  at  St.  Mary's,  and  assembled  daily 
in  each  other's  rooms,  for  the  purpose  of  prayer  and  study. 
John  was  invited  to  join  their  party,  and  his  superior  age, 
though  he  too  was  very  young,  together  with  his  station  in  the 
University,  his  character  for  learning,  and  above  all,  his  being 
in  priests'  order?,  combined  to  give  him  the  direction  of  the  little 
brotherhood.  Nothing  was  further  from  his  thoughts,  or  theirs, 
than  the  idea  of  separation  from  the  church  :  they  were,  indeed, 
completely  high  church  in  their  principles  and  practice.  John 
Wesley  added  a  remarkable  plainness  of  dress,  and  an  unusual 
manner  of  wearing  his  long  flaxen  hair ;  and  the  name  of 
Methodists  (a  term  not  taken,  as  is  generally  supposed,  from 
the  ancient  school  of  physicians  so  called,  but  from  a  religious 
sect  among  the  puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century)  was  the 
least  offensive  term  applied  to  them.  They  were  in  no  way 
molested  by  the  public  authorities,  either  of  the  University  or 
the  Church  of  England;  but  their  character  for  unusual  piety 
conciliated  the  good-will  of  their  ecclesiastical  superiors  till  some 
of  them  excited  opposition  by  doctrines  decidedly  at  variance 
with  the  prevailing  opinions  of.  the  church. 

We  have  now  sketched  the  school  and  college  life  of  John 


200  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Wesley,  unquestionably  a  man  of  very  eminent  talents  and  ac 
quirements. 

Hi*  genius,  naturally  clear  and  vivid,  hnd  been  developed  and  matured  during  hi*  resi 
dence  ut  Oxford,  by  an  unremitting  attention  to  the  studits  nf  the  place.  Ilia  industry 
and  management  of  time  few  have  equaled.  He  always  rose,  for  above  fifty  years  together, 
at  four  in  the  morning  He  rend  even  while  on  horseback  ;  and  during  the  latter  part  of 
hie  life,  when  his  long  journeys  were  made  in  i\  carriage,  he  boa.sU?d  thut  he  had  generally 
from  ten  to  twelve  hours  in  the  day  which  he  could  devote  to  ftudy  and  compoj-ition  Ac 
cordingly,  besides  the  ancient  language*,  he  was  competently  skilled  in  many  of  the  tongues 
of  modern  Europe,  and  his  journals  display  throupHout  a  remarkahle  and  increasing 
familiarity  with  the  general  reading,  the  poetry,  and  the  ephemeral  productions  of  hiiday. 
— Abridged  from  the  Quarterly  Review,  No.  47- 

LORD   MANSFIELD    AT    WESTMINSTER. 

"  Of  all  the  illustrious  characters"  (says  the  Queen's  Scholars' 
who  have  received  their  education  at  Westminster,  there 
is  perhaps  none  thut  holds  out  a  brighter  example  for  the  imita 
tion  of  youth  than  the  accomplished  lawyer  and  statesman,  Wil 
liam  Murray."  He  was  born  at  Perth  in  1704;  at  the  age  of 
three,  was  removed  to  London;  and  in  1710,  was  admitted  a 
King's  Scholar  £t  Westminster.  Here  he  distinguished  himself, 
not  so  much  in  his  poetry  as  in  his  other  exercises,  especially  in 
his  declamation,  prognosticating  that  eloquence  which  was 
matured  at  the  bar,  and  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  lie  was 
elected  to  Oxford  in  1723,  and  had  taken  his  degree  of  B.A.  in 
1727,  when  he  wrote  a  poem  on  the  Death  of  George  I.  and 
Accession  of  George  II.,  which  won  his  first  prize  given  on  the 
occasion.  He  took  his  degree  of  M.A.  in  1730,  and  in  the  fol 
lowing  year  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Society  of  Lincoln's 
Inn,  of  which  he  had  been  a  student  since  1724.  In  early  life 
he  associated  much  with  "  the  men  of  wit  about  town."  Dr. 
Johnson  said  of  him  that  "  when  he  first  came  to  town,  he  drank 
champagne  with  the  wits."  He  was  intimate  with  Pope  : 

"  How  sweet  an  Ovid,  Murray  was  our  boast." 

Dunciad,  iv.  169. 

As  a  lawyer,  he  was  self-taught,  and  had  never  gone  through 
the  process  of  a  special  pleader's  or  conveyancer's  office.  He 
studied  oratory,  as  well  at  Oxford  as  in  debating-clubs  in  Lon 
don.  Pope,  in  the  Epistle  dedicated  to  him,  says : 

"  Grac'd  as  thou  art  with  nil  the  power  of  words, 
So  known,  so  honor'd,  in  the  house  of  Lords." 

Lord  Mansfield's  attachment  to  Westminster  continued 
through  life ;  and  as  long  as  his  strength  would  permit  him,  he 
attended  regularly  the  plays  and  annual  meetings,  which  have 
for  so  many  years  been  venerated  customs  of  the  school.  At 
the  Election  dinner  of  1793,  his  death  was  feelingly  lamented, 
in  some  elegant  verses  written  by  Dean  Vincent,  and  spoken  by 
the  Captain,  Dr.  Kidd. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  207 


LORD  CHATHAM  AT  ETON  AND  OXFORD. 

This  illustrious  statesman  was  born  in  Westminster,  in  1708. 
He  was  sent  early  to  Eton,  where  his  high  qualities  were  soon 
discerned  by  the  head-master,  Dr.  Bland;  and  he  there  became 
eminent  among  a  group,  every  member  of  which  in  manhood 
acquired  celebrity.  George  (afterward  Lord)  Lyttleton,  Henry 
Fox  (afterward  Lord  Holland),  Sir  Charles  Hanbury  Williams, 
Henry  Fielding,  Charles  Pratt  (afterward  Lord  Camden),  were 
among  Pitt's  young  friends  and  competitors  at  Eton.  His  bi 
ographer,  Thackeray,  justly  remarks,  that  "among  the  many 
recommendations  which  will  always  attach  to  a  public  system  of 
education,  the  value  of  early  emulation,  the  force  of  example, 
the  abandonment  of  sulky  and  selfish  habits,  and  the  acquire 
ment  of  generous,  manly  dispositions,  are  not  to  be  overlooked. 
All  these  I  believe  to  have  had  weight  in  forming  the  character 
of  Lord  Chatham."* 

Pitt's  studies  were  not  neglected  during  his  school  vacations  ; 
for  his  father  provided  for  him  an  able  tutor  at  home  during 
these  periods,  and  himself  assisted  in  this  continuous  tuition. 
The  late  Lord  Stanhope  stated  that  "  Pitt  being  asked  to  what 
he  principally  ascribed  the  two  qualities  for  which  his  eloquence 
was  most  conspicuous,  namely,  the  lucid  order  of  his  reasonings, 
and  the  ready  choice  of  his  words,  answered,  that  he  believed  he 
owed  the  former  to  an  early  study  of  the  Aristotelian  logic,  and 
the  latter  to  his  father's  practice  in  making  him  every  day,  after 
reading  over  to  himself  some  passage  in  the  classics,  translate  it 
aloud  and  continuously  into  English  prose."  That  he  cultivated 
Latin  versification  early  is  attested  by  the  Latin  hexameters  on 
the  Death  of  George  the  First,  which  he  wrote  in  the  first  year 
after  he  was  admitted  a  gentleman  commoner  at  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  in  172G.  He  was  a  most  assiduous  student  of  the 
classics:  Demosthenes  was  his  favorite;  and  he  appears  to  have 
strongly  recommended  for  the  studies  of  his  second  son,  after 
ward  the  celebrated  minister,  the  first  book  of  Thucydides  and 
Polybius. 

Lord  Chatham's  studies  in  youth  were  not  exclusively  the 
classics  of  antiquity.  He  read  diligently  the  best  English  authors 
for  style ;  his  memory  was  excellent,  and  he  is  said  to  have 
known  some  of  Dr.  Barrow's  sermons  by  heart. 

DR.    JOHNSON    AT     LICHFIELD,     STOURBRIDGE,    AND     OXFORD. 

Lichfield,  in  Staffordshire,  is  scarcely  less  proud  of  Samuel 
Johnson,  than  is  Stratford-upon-Avon,  in  Warwickshire,  of 

*  Creasy's  Eminent  Etonians,  p.  212. 


208  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Shakspeare.  In  each  town  is  >hown  the  natal  home  and  s 
of  its  genius;  and  though  Johnson  rests  not,  like  Shakspeare,  in 
the  church  of  his  birthplace,  the  people  of  Lichfield  have  testi 
fied  their  veneration  of  their  illustrious  townsman  by  his  statue, 
while  Stratford  boasts  of  no  such  memorial  of  its  master-mind. 

Samuel  Johnson  was  born  in  1709.  His  father  was  a  book 
seller  and  stationer,  and  lived  in  a  house  in  the  market-place  at 
Lichfield,  which  remains  to  this  day.  Johnson's  mother  was  a 
woman  of  superior  understanding  and  much  piety,  to  which  are 
ascribed  the  early  impressions  of  religion  which  were  made 
upon  the  mind  of  her  son.  When  he  was  a  child  in  petticoats, 
and  had  learned  to  read,  Mrs.  Johnson  one  morning  put  the 
Common  Prayer-book  into  his  hands,  pointed  to  the  collect  for 
the  day,  and  said,  "  Sam,  you  must  get  this  by  heart."  She 
went  up-stairs,  but  by  the  time  she  had  reached  the  second  floor, 
she  heard  him  following  her.  "What's  the  matter?"  said  she. 
"  I  can  say  it,"  he  replied,  and  repeated  it  distinctly,  though  he 
could  not  have  read  it  more  than  twice. 

Samuel  was  afflicted  with  the  scrofula,  or  king's  evil;  and  his 
mother,  by  advice  of  a  physician  in  Lichfield,  took  the  child  to 
London  in  the  Lent  of  1712,  to  be  touched  by  Queen  Anne,  but 
the  ceremony  was  ineffectual.  Johnson  was  then  only  thirty 
months  old ;  but  he  used  to  relate  in  after  years,  that  they  went 
in  a  stage-coach,  and  returned  in  a  wagon;  and  that  the  queen 
wore  diamonds  and  a  long  black  hood. 

He  first  learned  to  read  of  his  mother,  and  her  old  maid 
Catharine,  in  whose  lap  he  well  remembered  sitting,  to  hear  the 
story  of  St.  George  and  the  Dragon.  Dame  Oliver,  a  widow, 
who  kept  a  school  for  little  children  in  Lichfield,  was  his  next 
teacher,  and  said  he  was  the  best  scholar  she  ever  had.  His 
next  instructor  in  English  was  one  "Tom  Brown,"  who  pub 
lished  a  spelling-book,  and  dedicated  it  to  "the  Universe."  At 
the  age  of  ten,  he  began  to  learn  Latin  with  Mr.  Hawkins,  un 
der-master  of  Lichfield  grammar-school;  in  two  years  Johnson 
rose  to  be  under  the  care  of  Mr.  Hunter,  the  head-master,  who, 
he  relates,  was  "  wrongheaded  and  severe,"  and  used  to  beat 
the  boys  unmercifully,  to  save  them,  as  he  said,  from  the  gal 
lows  ;  but  Johnson  was  sensible  that  he  owed  much  to  this  gen 
tleman,  and  invariably  expressed  his  approbation  of  enforcing 
instruction  by  the  rod.  Under  Mr.  Hunter,  Johnson  made  good 
progress;  he  seemed  to  learn  (says  one  of  his  school-fellows)  by 
intuition ;  for  though  indolence  and  procrastination  were  in 
herent  in  his  constitution,  whenever  he  made  an  exertion  he  did 
more  than  any  one  else ;  and  he  was  never  corrected  at  school, 
but  for  talking  and  diverting  other  boys  from  their  business. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  209 

His  favorites  received  very  liberal  assistance  from  him;  and 
three  of  his  juvenile  associates  used  to  come  in  the  morning,  and 
carry  him  to  school.  One  in  the  middle  stooped,  while  Johnson 
sat  upon  his  back,  and  one  on  each  side  supported  him ;  arid 
thus  he  was  borne  triumphant.  At  school  he  was  uncommonly 
inquisitive ;  and  he  never  forgot  anything  that  he  had  either 
heard  or  read.  In  consequence  of  his  defective  sight,  he  did  not 
join  the  other  boys  in  their  amusements.  His  only  diversion 
was  in  winter,  when  he  was  fond  of  being  drawn  upon  the  ice  by 
one  of  his  companions  barefooted,  who  pulled  him  along  by  a 
garter  tied  round  his  middle;  no  very  easy  operation,  as  he  was 
remarkably  large. 

Dr.  Percy,  editor  of  the  Reliques  of  Ancient  Poetry,  relates 
that  Johnson,  at  this  period,  was  immoderately  fond  of  reading 
romances  of  chivalry ;  and  he  attributed  to  such  extravagant 
fictions  that  unsettled  turn  of  mind  which  prevented  his  ever 
fixing  in  any  profession.  From  his  earliest  years  he  loved 
poetry,  but  hardly  ever  read  any  poem  to  the  end ;  he  perused 
Shakspeare  at  a  period  so  early,  that  the  speech  of  the  ghost  in 
Hamlet  terrified  him  when  alone.  One  day,  imagining  that  his 
brother  had  hid  some  apples  behind  a  large  folio  in  his  father's 
shop,  Samuel  climbed  up  to  search  for  them:  there  were  no  ap 
ples  ;  but  the  large  folio  proved  to  be  Petrarch,  whom  he  had 
seen  mentioned  in  some  preface  as  one  of  the  restorers  of  learn 
ing:  his  curiosity  was  excited — he  sat  down,  and  read  a  great 
part  of  the  book. 

Johnson  was  next  removed  to  the  school  of  Stourbridge,  Wor 
cestershire,  where  he  did  not  derive  much  benefit,  but  acted  as 
an  assistant  to  the  master,  in  teaching  the  younger  boys.  He 
subsequently  discriminated  his  progress  at  the  two  grammar- 
schools  thus :  "  at  one  I  learned  much  in  the  school,  but  little 
from  the  master ;  in  the  other  I  learned  much  from  the  master, 
but  little  in  the  school."  At  Stourbridge  he  was  admitted  into 
the  best  company  of  the  place;  he  remained  little  more  than  a 
year,  and  then  returned  home,  to  learn  his  father's  business ; 
but  he  lacked  application.  He,  however,  'read  much  in  a  desul 
tory  way,  as  he  afterward  told  Boswell,  his  biographer:  "all 
literature,  sir;  all  ancient  writers,  all  manly;  though  but  little 
Greek,  only  some  Anacreon  and  Hesiod;  but  in  this  irregular 
manner  I  had  looked  into  a  great  many  books  which  were  not 
commonly  known  at  the  universities,  where  they  seldom  read  any 
books  but  what  are  put  into  their  hands  by  their  tutors ;  so  that 
when  I  came  to  Oxford,  Dr.  Adams,  now  Master  of  Pembroke 
College,  told  me  I  was  the  best  qualified  for  the  University  he 
had  ever  known  come  there." 
U 


210  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Johnson  had  already  given  several  proofs  of  his  poetical 
genius,  both  in  his  school  exercises  and  other  occasional  compo 
sitions,  of  which  Boswell  quotes  specimens. 

In  1728,  Johnson,  being  then  in  his  nineteenth  year,  was  en 
tered  as  a  commoner  at  Pembroke  College :  his  father  accom 
panied  him,  and  introduced  him  to  his  tutor  as  a  good  scholar, 
and  a  poet  who  wrote  Latin  verses;  Johnson  behaved  modestly, 
and  sat  silent;  till,  upon  something  which  occurred  in  the  course 
of  conversation,  he  suddenly  struck  in,  and  quoted  Macrobius; 
and  thus  he  gave  the  first  impression  of  that  more  extensive 
reading  in  which  he  had  indulged  himself.  Johnson  describes 
his  tutor  as  "  a  very  worthy  man,  but  a  very  heavy  man."  Up 
on  occasion  of  being  fined  for  non-attendance,  he  said  to  the 
tutor,  "  Sir,  you  have  scored  me  twopence  for  non-attendance  at 
a  lecture  not  worth  a  penny."  Nevertheless,  Johnson  attended 
his  tutor's  lectures,  and  also  the  lectures  in  the  college,  very 
regularly.  At  his  request  he  translated  Pope's  Messiah  into 
Latin  verse,  as  a  Christmas  exercise,  with  uncommon  rapidity 
and  ability;  and  it  obtained  for  him  not  only  the  applause  of 
his  college  and  university,  but  of  Pope  himself,  who  is  said  to 
have  remarked:  "The  writer  of  this  poem  will  leave  it  a  ques 
tion  with  posterity,  whether  his  or  mine  be  the  original." 

Johnson's  line  of  reading  at  Oxford,  and  during  the  vacation?, 
cannot  be  traced.  He  told  Boswell  that  what  he  read  solidly 
at  the  university  was  Greek;  not  the  Grecian  historians,  but 
Homer  and  Kuripides,  and  now  and  then  a  little  epigram  ;  that 
the  study  of  which  he  was  most  fond  was  metaphysics,  but  that 
he  had  not  read  much  even  in  that  way.  It  is,  however,  certain, 
both  from  his  writings  and  conversation,  his  reading  was  very 
extensive.  He  appears,  at  various  times,  to  have  planned  a 
methodical  course  of  study.  Like  Southey,  he  had  a  peculiar 
faculty  in  seizing  at  once  what  was  valuable  in  any  book,  with 
out  reading  it  through.  He  wrote  at  all  times  impatiently  and 
in  a  huivy :  he  wrote  his  first  exercise  at  college  twice  over,  but 
never  took  that  trouble  with  any  other  composition,  and  his  best 
works  were  "struck  off  in  a  heat  with  rapid  exertion."  From 
his  being  short-sighted,  writing  was  inconvenient  to  him;  there 
fore,  he  never  committed  a  foul  draft  to  paper,  but  revolved  the 
subject  in  his  mind,  and  turned  and  formed  every  period,  till  he 
had  brought  the  whole  to  the  highest  correctness  and  the  most 
perfect  arrangement — when  he  wrote  it ;  and  his  uncommonly 
retentive  memory  enabled  him  to  deliver  a  whole  essay,  properly 
finished,  whenever  it  was  called  for. 

Johnson  was  a  great  favorite  with  his  college  companions ; 
and  he  might  often  be  seen  lounging  at  the  gate  of  Pembroke 


Anecdote  Biographies.  211 

College  amidst  a  circle  of  students,  whom  he  was  entertaining 
with  his  wit,  and  keeping  from  their  studies,  if  not  spiriting  them 
to  rebellion  against  the  college  discipline.  The  secret  of  this 
seeming  levity  and  insubordination  will  be  stated  best  in  John 
son's  own  words  :  "  I  was  mad  and  violent.  It  was  bitterness 
which  they  mistook  for  frolic.  I  was  miserably  poor,  and  I 
thought  to  fight  my  way  by  my  literature  arid  my  wit ;  so  I  dis 
regarded  all  power  and  all  authority;"  Johnson  did  not  form, 
any  close  intimacies  with  his  fellow-collegians,  though  he  loved 
Pembroke  to  the  last.  lie  boasted  of  the  many  eminent  men 
who  had  been  educated  there,  and  how  many  poets  had  been 
Pembroke  men,  adding,  u  Sir,  we  were  a  nest  of  singing  birds." 
But,  Johnson's  university  education,  through  his  scanty  supply 
of  funds  from  home,  and  the  shortcomings  of  a  friend,  was  left 
uncompleted  ;  and  he  personally  left  college  without  a  degree, 
December  12,  1729,  though  his  name  remained  on  the  books  till 
October  8,  1731. 

Whatever  instruction  Johnson  received  from  his  mother  in 
the  doctrines  and  duties  of  Christianity,  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  followed  up;  and  it  was  not  until  his  going  to  Oxford  that 
he  became  a  sincerely  pious  man.  When  at  the  University,  he 
took  up  the  Nonjuror  Law's  Serious  Call  to  a  Holy  Life,  and 
was  so  affected  and  convinced  by  its  contents,  that  from  tins 
time  religion  was  the  predominant  object  of  his  thoughts  and 
affections. 

But  he  returned  to  Lichfield  from  the  University  with  gloomy 
prospects.  In  1731,  he  made  an  unsuccessful  effort  to  procure 
the  appointment  of  usher  in  the  grammar-school  of  Stourbridge, 
where  he  had  been  partly  educated.  In  the  summer  follow 
ing  he  obtained  a  situation  in  the  school  of  Market  Bosworth, 
Leicestershire,  to  which  he  went  on  foot:  the  employment  was, 
however,  irksome  to  him,  and  he  soon  quitted  it.  Soon  after 
this  he  went  to  Birmingham,  and  undertook,  for  the  first  book 
seller  established  there,  a  translation  and  abridgment  of  a  Voyage 
to  Abyssinia,  by  Lobo,  a  Portuguese  Jesuit,  for  which  he  received 
five  guineas ! 

Johnson  now  returned  to  Lichfield,  and  in  1736  married  Mrs. 
Porter,  a  widow,  with  whom  he  opened  a  private  academy  at 
Edial  Hall,  near  Lichfield ;  but  the  establishment  did  not  suc 
ceed  ;  he  had  only  three  pupils,  two  of  whom  were  David  Gar- 
rick  and  his  brother.  Meanwhile  he  was  storing  his  mind,  and 
employed  on  his  tragedy  of  Irene.  Next  year,  accompanied  by 
Garrick,  he  repaired  to  London,  to  try  his  fortune  in  "that  great 
field  of  genius  and  exertion." 

At  Lichfield,  the  house  in  which  Johnson  was  born  is  inces- 


212  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

santly  visited  by  pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  Opposite 
is  the  statue  of  the  Doctor,  its  pedestal  sculptured  with  bass- 
reliefs  of  incidents  in  his  life  ;  and  near  a  footpath  in  the  town 
is  a  willow,  from  a  shoot  of  the  tree  planted  by  Johnson's  hands. 
These  are  trifling  memorials  compared  with  the  works  which  his 
genius,  learning,  and  understanding  produced  in  the  service  of 
religion  and  virtue,  and  which  have  led  even  his  most  grudging 
critic  to  pronounce  Johnson  to  have  been  "both  a  great  and  a 
good  man." 

HOW  JAMES    FERGUSON    TAUGHT    HIMSELF  THE    CLASSICS  AND 
ASTRONOMY. 

Ferguson  has  been  characterized  as  literally  his  own  instruc 
tor  in  the  very  elements  of  knowledge ;  without  the  assistance 
either  of  books  or  a  living  teacher,  lie  was  born  in  1710,  in 
BanfFfehire,  where  his  father  was  a  day-laborer,  but  religious  and 
honest.  He  taught  his  children  to  read  and  write,  as  they 
reached  the  proper  age ;  but  James  was  too  impatient  to  wait 
till  his  regular  turn  came,  and  after  listening  to  his  father  teach 
ing  his  elder  brother,  he  would  get  hold  of  the  book,  and  try 
hard  to  master  the  lesson  which  he  had  thus  heard  gone  over; 
and,  ashamed  to  let  his  father  know  w  hat  he  was  about,  he  used 
to  apply  to  an  old  woman  to  solve  his  difficulties.  In  this  way 
he  learned  to  read  tolerably  well  before  his  father  suspected  that 
he  knew  his  letters. 

When  about  seven  or  eight  years  of  age,  Ferguson,  seeing  that 
to  raise  the  fallen  roof  of  his  cottage,  his  father  applied  to  it  a 
beam,  resting  on  a  prop,  in  the  manner  of  a  lever,  the  young 
philosopher,  by  experiment  with  models  which  he  made  by  a 
simple  turning-lathe  and  a  little  knife,  actually  discovered  two 
of  the  most  important  elementary  truths  in  mechanics  —  the 
lever,  and  the  wheel  and  axle;  and  he  afterward  hit  upon  other 
discoveries,  without  either  book  or  teacher  to  assist  him.  While 
tending  sheep  in  the  fields,  he  used  to  make  models  of  mills, 
spinning-wheels,  etc.;  and  at  night,  he  used  to  lie  down  on  his 
back  in  the  fields,  observing  the  heavenly  bodies.  "I  used  to 
stretch,"  says  he,  "a  thread  with  small  beads  on  it,  at  arms- 
length,  between  my  eye  and  the  stars ;  sliding  the  beads  upon  it 
till  they  hid  such  and  such  stars  from  my  eye,  in  order  to  take 
their  apparent  distances  from  one  another ;  and  then  laying  the 
thread  down  on  a  paper,  I  marked  the  stars  thereon  by  the 
beads."  His  master  encouraged  him  in  these  and  similar  pur 
suits ;  and,  says  Ferguson,  "often  took  the  threshing  flail  out  of 
my  hands  and  worked  himself,  while  I  sat  by  him  in  the  barn, 
busy  with  my  compasses,  ruler,  and  pen."  He  also  tells  us  how 


Anecdote  Biographies.  213 

he  made  an  artificial  globe  from  a  description  in  Gordon's  Geo 
graphical  Grammar;  a  wooden  clock,  wHi  the  neck  of  a  broken 
bottle  for  the  bell ;  and  a  timepiece  or  watch,  moved  by  a  spring 
of  whalebone.  After  many  years  he  came  to  London,  became 
a  popular  lecturer  on  astronomy,  and  had  George  III.,  then  a 
boy,  among  his  auditors:  Ferguson  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  wrote  several  works  valuable  for  the  simplic 
ity  and  ingenuity  of  their  elucidations. 

LORD  CAMDEN  AT  ETON  AND  CAMBRIDGE. 

Charles  Pratt,  Lord  Camden,  the  profound  jurist  and  enlight 
ened  statesman,  was  born  of  good  family,  in  1714,  at  Colhamp- 
ton,  in  Devonshire.  His  father,  Sir  John  Pratt,  Chief  Justice 
of  the  King's  Bench,  in  George  the  First's  reign,  died  when  his 
son  Charles  was  ten  years  old ;  soon  after,  he  was  sent  to  Eton, 
and  elected  on  the  foundation.  He  pursued  his  classical  studies 
with  great  diligence.  Here  he  was  a  bosom  friend  of  William 
Pitt,  afterward  Earl  of  Chatham:  this  friendship  did  not  cease 
with  their  college  days,  for  Pratt  owed  to  Pitt  his  first  legal  pro 
motion,  his  introduction  to  political  life,  and  his  Chancellorship ; 
and  in  return,  Lord  Camden  proved  "a  tower  of  strength"  to 
Chatham  in  his  constitutional  campaigns. 

Pratt  left  Eton  for  King's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1731  :  here 
"he  read  with  genius;"  his  favorite  authors  being  Livy  and 
Claudian.  He  had  been,  when  a  little  child,  destined  by  his 
father  for  the  bar;  he  had  entered  at  the  Inner  Temple  before 
he  went  to  Cambridge ;  and  at  the  university,  as  the  best  basis 
for  legal  excellence,  he  studied  the  English  history  and  constitu 
tion,  the  science  of  jurisprudence,  and  the  masterpieces  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  Having  taken  his  degree,  in  1735,  he  left  Cam 
bridge  for  London,  and  was  called  to  the  bar  in  1738. 

SHENSTONE'S  "  SCHOOLMISTRESS." 

William  Shenstone,  "the  poet  of  the  Leasowes,"  was  born 
upon  that  estate,  at  Hales-Owen,  Shropshire,  in  1714.  He 
learned  to  read  at  what  is  termed  a  dame-school,  and  his  vene 
rable  teacher  has  been  immortalized  in  his  poem  of  "  The  School 
mistress."  He  soon  received  such  delight  from  books,  that  he 
was  always  calling  for  fresh  entertainment,  and  expected  that 
when  any  of  the  family  went  to  market,  a  new  book  should  be 
brought  to  him,  which,  when  it  came,  was  in  fondness  carried  to 
bed,  and  laid  by  him.  It  is  related  that  when  his  request  had 
been  neglected,  his  mother  wrapped  up  a  piece  of  wood  of  the 
same  form,  and  pacified  him  for  the  night.  As  he  grew  older,  he 
went  for  a  time  to  the  grammar-school  at  Hales-Owen,  and  was 


214  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

afterward  placed  with  an  eminent  schoolmaster  at  Solihull, 
where  he  distinguished  himself  by  the  quickness  of  his  progres?. 
He  was  next  sent  to  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  where  he  con 
tinued  his  name  in  the  book  ten  years,  but  took  no  degree.  At 
Oxford,  in  1737,  he  published  his  first  work,  a  small  poetical 
miscellany,  without  his  name.  In  1740,  appeared  his  Judgment 
of  Hercules ;  and  in  two  years  afterward  his  pleasing  poem,  in 
the  stanza  of  Spenser,  entitled  the  Schoolmistress,  "so  delight 
fully  quaint  and  ludicrous,  yet  true  to  nature,  that  it  has  all  the 
force  and  vividness  of  a  painting  by  Teniers  or  Wilkie."  The 
cottage  of  the  dame  was  long  preserved  as  a  picturesque  memo 
rial  of  the  poet.  How  vividly  has  he  portrayed  the  teacher  of  a 
bygone  age  in  these  stanzas ! 

In  every  village  marked  with  little  spire, 
Embowered  in  trees,  and  hardly  known  to  fame, 
There  dwells  in  lowly  shed  and  mean  attire, 
A  matron  old,  whom  w<:  schoolmistress  name; 
Who  boost*  unruly  brats  with  birch  to  tame  : 
They  grievous  sore,  in  piteous  durance  pent, 
Awed  by  the  power  of  this  relentless  dame ; 
And  ofUlmefl  on  vagaries  idly  bent, 
For  unkempt  hair,  or  task  unconned,  are  sorely  shent. 

And  all  in  fight  doth  rise  a  birchen  tree, 
Which  learning  near  her  little  dome  did  stowe  ; 
Whilom  a  twig  of  small  regard  to  see, 
Though  now  so  wide  its  waving  branches  flow, 
And  work  the  si  nple  vassals  mickle^wo ; 
For  not  a  wind  might  curl  the  leaves  that  blew, 
But  their  limbs  shuddered,  and  their  pulse  beat  low  ; 
And  as  they  looked,  they  found  their  horror  grew, 
And  shaped  it  iuto  rods,  and  tingled  at  the  view. 

Near  to  this  dome  is  found  a  patch  so  green. 
On  which  the  trib«  their  gambols  do  display  ; 
And  at  the  door  imprisoning  board  is  seen, 
Lest  weakly  wights  of  smaller  size  should  stray  ; 
Eager,  perdie,  to  bask  in  sunny  day  ! 
The  noises  intermixed,  which  thence  resound, 
Do  learning's  little  tenement  betray  : 
Where  siw  the  dame  disguised  in  look  profound, 
And  eyes  her  fairy  throng,  and  turns  her  wheel  around. 

Her  cap  far  whiter  than  the  driven  snow. 

Emblem  right  meet  of  decency  does  yield  : 

Her  apron,  dyed  in  grain,  as  blue,  I  trow, 

As  is  the  harebell  that  adorns  the  field ; 

And,  in  her  hand,  for  sceptre,  she  does  wield 

Tway  birchen  sprays;  with  anxious  fear  entwined, 

With  dark  distrust,  and  sad  repentance  filled  ; 

And  steadfast  hate,  and  sharp  affliction  joined, 
And  fury  uncontrolled,  aud  chastisement  unkind. 

******* 

Yet,  nursed  with  skill,  what  dazzling  fruits  appear! 

Even  now  sagacious  foresight  points  to  show 

A  little  bench  of  headless  bishops  here, 

And  there  a  chancellor  in  embryo, 

Or  bard  sublime,  if  bard  may  e'er  be  so, 

As  Milton,  Shakspeare,— names  that  ne'er  shall  die  '. 

Though  now  he  crawl  along  the  ground  so  low, 

Nor  weeting  how  the  Muse  should  soar  so  high, 
Wisheth,  poor  starveling  elf,  his  paper  kite  may  fly.* 

»  This  stanza  U  thought  to  have  suggested  to  Gray  the  fine  reflection  in  hi*  Elegy— 
"  Some  muto  inglorious  Milton  here  may  rest,''  etc. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  215 

Shenstone  wrote  also  some  graceful  letters  and  essays ;  and 
showed  much  taste  in  embellishing  the  Leasowes.  He  died, 
here,  in  the  prime  of  life,  in  1763. 

GRAY   AT    ETON  AND    CAMBRIDGE. 

Thomas  Gray,  of  all  English  poets,  the  most  finished  artist, 
was  born  in  Cornhill,  in  1716,  and  was  the  only  one  of  twelve 
children  who  survived  the  period  of  infancy.  His  father  was  a 
money-scrivener,  and  of  harsh  and  violent  disposition,  whose 
wife  was  forced  to  separate  from  him ;  and  to  the  exertions  of 
this  excellent  woman,  as  partner  with  her  sister  in  a  millinery 
business,  the  poet  owed  the  advantages  of  a  learned  education, 
toward  which  his  father  had  refused  all  assistance.  He  was 
sent  to  be  educated  at  Eton,  where  a  maternal  uncle,  named 
Antrobus,  was  one  of  the  assistant-masters.  He  remained  here 
six  years,  and  made  himself  a  good  classic ;  he  was  an  intimate 
associate  of  the  accomplished  Richard  West,  this  being  one  of 
the  most  interesting  school-friendships  on  record.  West  went 
to  Oxford,  whence  he  thus  wrote  to  Gray : 

"You  use  me  very  cruelly:  you  have  sent  me  but  one  letter  since  I  have  been  at  Oxford, 
and  that  too  agreeable  not  to  make  me  sensible  how  great  my  loss  is  in  not  having  more, 
^ext  to  seeing  you  is  the  pleasure  of  seeing  your  handwriting ;  next  to  hearing  you  is  the 
pleasure  cf  hearing  from  you.  Keally  and  sincerely,  I  wonder  at  you,  that  you  thought 
it  not  worth  while  to  answer  my  last  letter.  1  hope  this  will  have  better  success  in  behalf 
of  your  quondam  school-fellow  ;  in  behalf  of  one  who  has  walked  hand  in  hand  with  you, 
like  the  two  children  in  the  wood, 

Thro'  many  a  flow'ry  path  and  shelly  grot, 
Where  learning  lull'd  her  in  her  private*  maze. 

The  very  thought,  you  see,  tips  my  pen  with  poetry,  and  brings  Eton  to  my  view." 

Another  of  Gray's  associates  at  Eton  was  Horace  "Wai pole; 
they  removed  together  to  Cambridge  ;  Gray  resided  at  Peter- 
house  from  1735  to  1738,  when  he  left  without  a  degree.  The 
spirit  of  Jacobitism  and  its  concomitant  hard  drinking,  which 
then  prevailed  at  Cambridge,  ill  suited  the  taste  of  Gray ;  nor 
did  the  uncommon  proficiency  he  had  made  at  Eton  hold  first 
rank,  for  he  complains  of  college  impertinences,  and  the  endurance 
of  lectures,  daily  and  hourly.  "Must  I  pore  into  metaphysics?" 
asks  Gray.  "Alas,  I  cannot  see  in  the  dark ;  nature  has  not 
furnished  me  with  the  optics  of  a  cat.  Must  1  pore  upon  mathe 
matics  ?  Alas,  I  cannot  see  in  too  much  light :  I  am  no  eagle. 
It  is  very  possible  that  two  and  two  make  four,  but  I  would  not 
give  four  farthings  to  demonstrate  this  ever  so  clearly ;  and  if 
these  be  the  profits  of  life,  give  me  the  amusements  of  it."  Yet 
Gray  subsequently  much  regretted  that  he  had  never  applied 
his  mind  to  the  study  of  mathematics ;  and  once,  rather  late  in 

*  This  expression  prettily  distinguishes  their  studies  when  out  of  the  public  school, 
which  would,  naturally,  at  their  age,  be  vague  and  desultory. — Mason. 


216  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

life,  had  an  intention  to  undertake  it.  His  time  at  Cambridge 
was  devoted  to  classics,  modern  languages,  and  poetry  ;  and  a 
few  Latin  poems  and  Knglish  translations  were  made  by  him  at 
this  period.  In  "the  agonies  of  leaving  college,"  he  complains 
of  "the  dust,  the  old  boxes,  the  bedsteads,  and  tutors,"  that  were 
about  his  ears.  "I  am  coming  away,"  he  says,  "all  so  fast,  and 
leaving  behind  me  without  the  least  remorse,  all  the  beauties  of 
Stourbridge  Fair.  Its  white  bears  may  roar,  its  apes  may 
wring  their  hands,  and  crocodiles  cry  their  eyes  out,  all's 
one  for  that ;  I  shall  not  once  visit  them,  nor  so  much  as  take 
my  leave." 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  West,  he  says  :  "  I  learn  Italian  like  any  d-apon,  and  in  two  months 
am  got  through  the  16th  Hook  of  Tasso,  whom  I  hold  in  great  admiration  ;  1  want  you  to 
learn  too,  that  I  may  know  your  opinion  of  him  ;  nothing  can  be  easier  than  thai  language 
to  any  one  who  knows  l/itin  and  French  already,  and  there  are  few  so  copious  and  e'xpresa- 
ivi'."  In  the  same  letter  he  tells  him,  ''that  his  college  has  set  him  a  versifying  on  a- 
public  occa.*ion  (viz.,  those  verses  which  are  culled  Tripos),  on  the  theme  of  Luna  est 
hahitabilis."  The  poem  is  to  be  found  in  the  Muter  Etnntnst*.  (vol.  ii,  p  107  )  .  .  •  • 
"His  hexameters  are,  as  far  as  modern  ones  can  be.  after  the  manner  of  Virgil.  They 
move  in  the  succession  of  his  pauses,  and  close  with  his  elisions." — Mason. 

In  1739,  Gray  accompanied  Horace  Walpole  on  a  tour  through 
France  and  Italy;  but,  as  they  could  not  agree,  Gray  being,  as 
Walpole  has  it,  "too  serious  a  companion,"  the  former  returned 
to  Kngland  in  1741.  He  next  went  to  Cambridge,  to  take  his 
degree  in  Civil  Law.  He  now  devoted  himself  to  the  classics, 
and  at  the  same  time  cultivated  his  muse.  At  Cambridge  he 
was  considered  an  unduly  fastidious  man,  and  the  practical  jokes 
and  "incivilities"  played  oft'  upon  him  by  his  fellow-inmates  at 
Peterhouse — one  of  which  was  a  false  alarm  of  fire,  through 
which  he  descended  from  his  window  to  the  ground  by  a  rope — 
was  the  cause  of  his  migrating  to  Pembroke  Hall.  He  subse 
quently  obtained  the  professorship  of  Modern  History  in  the 
University.  He  usually  passed  the  summer  with  his  mother  at 
Stoke,  near  Eton,  in  which  picturesque  locality  he  composed  his 
two  most  celebrated  poems — the  Ode  on  a  Distant  Prospect  of 
Eton  College,  and  his  Elegy  written  in  a  Country  Churchyard. 
In  the  Ode,  he  exclaims  with  filial  fervor  to  the  College  where 
he  had  spent  six  years  of  his  life  as  a  boy: 

Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers. 

That  crown  the  wa  ery  glade. 
Where  grateful  Science  still  adores 

Her  Henry's  holy  shade  ; 
And  ye,  that  from  the  stately  brow 
Of  \\  indsor's  heights,  th1  expanse  below 

Of  grove,  of  lawn,  of  mead  survey, 
Whn.-e  turf,  whose  shade,  whose  flowers  among 
Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 

His  silver-winding  way : 

Ah,  happy  hills  !  ah,  pleasing  shade! 
Ah,  fields  beloved  iu  vain  1 


Anecdote  Biographies.  217 

Where  once  my  careless  childhood  stray'd, 

A  stranger  )  et  to  pain  ! 
I  feel  the  gales  that  from  ye  blow 
A  momentary  bliss  bestow, 

As  waving  fresh  their  gladsome  wing, 
My  weary  soul  they  seem  to  soothe, 
And,  redolent  of  joy  and  youth, 

To  breathe  a  second  spring. 

Say,  Father  Thames,  for  thou  hast  seen 

Full  many  a  sprightly  race 
Disporting  on  thy  margent  green, 

The  paths  of  pleasure  trace ; 
Who  foremost  now  delight  to  cleave, 
With  pliant,  arm  thy  glassy  wave? 

The  captive  linnet  which  enthrall! 
What  idle  progeny  succeed 
To  chase  the  rolling  circle's  speed,* 

Or  urge  the  flying  ball? 

Gray  continued  to  reside  at  Cambridge  (it  is  considered)  prin 
cipally  on  account  of  the  valuable  libraries  of  the  University — 
for  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  readers,  though  the  most  sparing 
of  writers.  While  at  dinner  one  day  in  the  College-hall,  he  was 
taken  ill,  and  after  six  days'  suffering,  he  expired  July  30,  1771 : 
he  was  buried  according  to  his  desire,  by  the  side  of  his  mother, 
at  Stoke.  Gray  was  a  profound  as  well  as  elegant  scholar;  kihe 
attained  the  highest  degree  of  splendor  of  which  poetical  style 
seems  to  be  capable ;  he  is  the  only  modern  English  writer 
whose  Latin  verses  deserve  general  notice ;  in  his  letters  he  has 
shown  the  descriptive  powers  of  a  poet ;  in  new  combinations 
of  generally  familiar  words  he  was  eminently  happy ;  and  he 
was  the  most  learned  poet  since  Milton."  (Sir  James  Mack 
intosh.)  Gray  was  also  an  excellent  botanist,  zoologist,  and 
antiquary. 

The  accomplished  Earl  of  Carlisle,  who  has  elegantly  com 
memorated  the  genius  of  this  poet,  feeling  the  identification 
which  his  celebrated  Ode  gives  to  his  muse  with  the  memory  of 
Eton,  has  presented  to  the  College  a  bust  of  Gray,  which  has 
been  added  to  the  collection  of  the  busts  of  other  worthies  placed 
in  the  Upper  School-room. 

HOW    BRINDLEY    TAUGHT    HIMSELF    THE    RUDIMENTS    OF 
MECHANICS. 

James  Brindley,  the  sagacious  engineer,  was  born  in  Derby 
shire,  in  1716,  and  was  employed  when  a  boy  in  field  labor. 
His  father,  who  had  reduced  himself  to  extreme  poverty  by  his 
dissipated  habits,  allowed  his  son  to  grow  up  without  any  educa 
tion  ;  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  this  great  genius  was  barely  able 
to  read,  and  could  write  little  more  than  his  own  name.  At  the 
age  of  17,  he  apprenticed  himself  to  a  millwright  at  Macclesfield, 

*  "  To  chase  the  hoop's  elusive  speed." — MS. 


218  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

a  few  miles  from  his  native  place.  He  was  sadly  neglected  by 
his  master,  who  frequently  left  him  for  whole  weeks  together,  to 
execute  works  concerning  which  he  had  not  given  him  any  in 
struction.  These  works  Brindley  finished  in  his  own  way,  greatly 
to  the  surprise  of  his  master,  who  was  often  astonished  at  the 
improvements  his  apprentice  from  time  to  time  introduced  into 
the  millwright  business.  lie  rose  to  be  the  greatest  engineer  of 
his  day,  not  only  in  mill  machinery,  but  in  drainage  works,  and 
the  improvement  of  our  inland  navigation  by  canals.  It  was 
when  being  examined  before  a  Committee  of  the  House  of  Com 
mons,  and  being  asked  for  what  objects  rivers  were  created,  he 
gave  the  ready  answer,  "To  feed  navigable  canals." 

Brindley's  designs  were  the  resources  of  his  own  mind  alone. 
When  he  was  beset  with  any  difficulty,  he  secluded  himself,  and 
worked  out  unaided  the  means  of  accomplishing  his  schemes. 
Sometimes  he  lay  in  bed  for  two  or  three  days ;  but  when  he 
arose,  he  proceeded  at  once  to  carry  his  plans  into  effect,  without 
the  help  of  drawings  or  models. 

"WILLIAM    COLLINS    AT    WINCHESTER   AND    OXFORD. 

William  Collins,  whose  odes  exhibit  vast  powers  of  poetry, 
and  who  is  inferior  to  no  English  poet  of  the  18th  century,  ex 
cept  Gray,  was  born  at  Chichester,  in  1721.*  His  father  was 
a  hatter,  and  at  the  time  of  the  poet's  birth,  mayor  of  Chiches 
ter.  He  was  sent,  when  very  young,  to  the  prebendal  school 
there,  an  ancient  institution  founded  by  Bishop  Storey,  in  the 
reign  of  Edward  IV.;  here  also  were  educated  Selden,  Bishop 
Juxon,  and  Ilurdis.  Collins  was  early  designed  by  his  parents 
for  the  church.  He  was  removed  from  Chichester,  and  ad 
mitted  a  scholar  on  the  foundation  of  Winchester  College  in 
1733. 

In  this  venerable  institution — where  the  scholars  on  the  foundation  wear  the  dresa  pre 
scribed  by  the  rules  of  the  founder,  in  which  rejoicings  over  a  holiday  arc  sunn  in  ancient 
J^atin  verse,  and  terms  and  phrases  long  fallen  into  di.-use  without  its  walls,  are  still  the 
current  talk  of  healthy  boys — Collins  remained  seven  years.  The  master  was  then  Dr. 
Burton,  a  name  that  will  long  be  associated  with  the  college.  Among  Collins's  school 
fellows  were  William  Whiteuead  and  Joseph  Warton,  the  poets,  and  Hampton,  afterward 


*  Collins,  in  his  i;  Ode  to  Pity,"  alludes  to  his  "native  plains,"  which  arc  bounded  by 
the  South  Downs,  and  to  the  small  river  Arun,  one  of  the  streams  of  Sussex,  near 
which  Otway  alto  was  born  : 

But  wherefore  need  I  wander  wide 
To  old  llissus's  distant  tide  ' 

Deserted  stream  and  mute ! 
Wild  Arun,  too,  has  heard  thy  strains, 
And  Echo  :midst  my  native  plums 

Been  soothed  by  I'ity's  lute. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  219 

translator  of  Polybius  — Life,  by  Mr.  May  Thomas,  prefixed  to  new  edition  of  Collinses 
Pottical  Works.    1858.* 

About  September,  1733,  Lord  Peterborough  paid  a  vitit  to 
Winchester  College,  with  Pope,  who  proposed  a  subject  for 
a  poem.  Collins  was  then  too  young  to  contest  the  prizes, 
which  were  carried  off  by  Whitehead  and  Hampton;  but  he 
must  have  seen  Pope  on  that  occasion.  Johnson  speaks  of  verses 
published  five  years  later  as  those  by  which  Collins  "first 
courted  the  notice  of  the  public;"  but  he  appears  to  have  made 
verses  as  early  as  Pope.  He  is  said  at  twelve  years  old  to  have 
written  a  poem  "On  the  Battle  of  the  School-books,"  at 
Winchester,  probably  suggested  by  Swift's  satire,  of  which  the 
line  — 

"  And  every  Gradus  flapped  his  leathern  •wing'' — 

was  afterward  remembered. 

At  Winchester,  when  about  seventeen  years  old,  Collins 
wrote  his  Persian  Eclogues,  after  reading  that  volume  of 
Salmon's  Modern  History  which  describes  Persia.  In  January, 
1733,  some  lines,  by  Collins,  appeared  in  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine  ;  and  in  October  of  that  year,  the  Editor  inserted  a 
Sonnet  from  Collins,  together  with  some  verses  of  Joseph 
Warton,  and  another  school-fellow  at  Winchester,  which  came, 
he  tells  us,  "in  one  letter;"  and  in  the  next  number  of  the  Mag 
azine  appeared  a  criticism  on  the  above  three  poems,  written  by 
Dr.  Johnson,  then  toiling  in  poverty  and  obscurity,  for  Cave :  he 
gives  the  palm  to  Collins's  Sonnet. 

On  March  21,  1740,  Collins  was  formally  admitted  a  com 
moner  of  Queen's  College ;  but  he  did  not  go  to  Oxford  until 
some  time  afterward.  In  the  summer  of  the  same  year,  Collins 
was  elected  at  Winchester,  and  placed  first  on  the  roll  for  ad 
mission  in  the  succeeding  year  to  New  College,  Oxford ;  but  no 
vacancy  occurred  —  a  rare  misfortune,  —  which,  however,  had 
befallen  the  poet  Young  some  years  before. 

Next  year,  Collins  was  admitted  a  Demy  of  Magdalen 
College,  where  he  continued  to  devote  himself  to  poetry.  Lang- 
horne  states  that  he  was  at  this  time  distinguished  for  genius 
and  indolence,  and  that  the  few  exercises  which  he  could  be 
induced  to  write  bore  evident  marks  of  both  qualities.  Among 
his  college  acquaintances  were  Hampton  and  Gilbert  White, 
and  his  constant  friends  the  two  Wartons.  On  November  18, 
1743,  Collins  took  the  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts:  he  quitted 
the  college  at  some  time  before  the  July  election  in  1744. 
He  obtained  a  curacy,  but  soon  gave  up  all  views  in  the  church, 

*  Aldine  Poets.     Published  by  Bell  and  Daldy.     This  edition  has  a  portrait  of  Collins  at 
the  age  of  fourteen,  from  a  drawing  :  no  other  portrait  of  Collins  is  known  to  exist. 


220  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

and  preferred  the  precarious  profession  of  a  man  of  letters. 
His  irresolution  soon  led  him  into  difficulties.  But  his  studies 
were  extensive,  and  his  scholarship  great.  His  Odes  have 
always  been  the  favorite  of  poets ;  and  they  won  for  him  the 
praises  he  prized  most.  He  enjoyed  the  friendship  and  affec 
tion  of  Johnson  ;  and  the  intimacy  of  Thomson.  But  the  latter 
part  of  his  short  life  must  be  remembered  with  pity  and  sad 
ness:  he  languished  for  some  years  under  deprcsi-ion  of  mind, 
and  was  for  a  time  bereft -of  reason.  He  died  in  175G,  at 
Chichester,  and  is  buried  in  the  Cathedral,  where  a  monu 
ment,  by  Flaxman,  has  been  erected  to  his  memory.  The 
poet  is  represented  reading  an  English  Testament,  such  as  at 
one  period  he  invariably  traveled  with  ;  it  is  referred  in  the 
inscription  on  the  tablet  by  the  poet  Ilayley  and  Mr.  John 
Sargent : 

Who  joined  pure  fnith  to  strong  poetic  powers  ; 
Who,  in  reviving  reason's  lurid  hours. 
Sought  on  one  book  his  troubled  mind  to  rest, 
And  rightly  deemed  the  book  of  God  the  best. 

LORD    CLIVE — HIS    DARING    BOYHOOD. 

Robert  Clive,  the  founder  of  the  British  empire  in  India, 
was  born  in  172G,  at  Styche,  near  Market  Dray  ton,  in  Shrop 
shire,  where  his  family  had  been  settled  since  the  twelfth  century. 

Some  lineaments  of  the  character  of  the  man  (says  Tx>rd  Macaulay)  were  early  dis 
cerned  iu  the  child  There  remain  letters  written  by  his  relations  when  he  was  in  hi* 
seventh  year;  and  from  these  letters  it  appears  that,  even  at  that  early  age.  his  strong  will 
and  his  fiery  passion?,  sustained  by  a  constitutional  intrepidity  which  sometimes  *eeme<l 
hardly  compatible  with  soundness  of  mind,  had  begun  to  cause  great  uneasiness  to  hifl 
family.  '•  Fighting,1'  says  one  of  his  uncles,  ••  to  which  he  is  out  of  measure  addicted, 
gives  his  temper  such  a  fieiceness  and  imperiousness,  that  he  flies  out  on  every  trifling 
occasion.''  The  old  people  in  the  neighborhood  still  remember  to  have  heard  from  their 
parents  how  Bob  Clive  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  lofty  steeple  of  Market  Dray  ton.  and  with 
what  terror  the  inhabitants  saw  him  seated  on  a  stone  spout  near  the  summit.  They  aho 
relate  how  he  formed  all  the  idle  lads  of  the  town  into  a  kind  of  predatory  army,  and  com 
pelled  the  shopkeepers  to  submit  to  a  tribute  of  apples  and  halfpence,  in  consideration  of 
which  he  guaranteed  the  security  of  their  windows.  He  was  sent  from  school  to  school, 
making  very  little  progress  in  his  learning,  and  gaining  for  himself  everywhere  the  char 
acter  of  an  exceedingly  naughty  boy.  One  of  his  masters,  it  is  said,  was  sagacious  enough 
to  prophesy  that  the  idle  lad  would  make  a  great  figure  in  the  world.  But  the  general 
opinion  seems  to  have  been  that  poor  Hobert  was  a  dunce,  if  not  a  reprobate  His  family 
expected  nothing  good  from  such  slender  parts  and  such  a  headstrong  temper  It  is  not 
strange,  therefore,  that  they  gladly  accepted  for  him,  when  he  was  in  bin  eighteenth  year, 
a  writership  in  the  service  of  the  East  India  Company,  and  shipped  him  off  to  make  a  for 
tune,  or  die  of  fever  at  Madras. 

Clive  arrived  at  Madras  in  1744,  where  his  situation  was 
most  painful :  his  pay  was  small,  he  was  wretchedly  lodged,  and 
his  shy  and  haughty  disposition  withheld  him  from  introducing 
himself  to  strangers.  The  climate  affected  his  health  and  spirits, 
and  his  duties  were  ill-suited  to  his  ardent  and  daring  character. 
"lie  pined  for  his  home,  and  in  his  letters  to  his  relations  ex 
pressed  his  feelings  in  language  softer  and  more  pensive  than 
we  should  have  expected  from  the  waywardness  of  his  boyhood, 


Anecdote  Biographies.  221 

or  from  the  inflexible  sternness  of  his  later  years.  '  I  have  not 
enjoyed,'  says  he,  '  one  happy  day  since  I  left  my  native  coun 
try;'  and  again,  'I  must  confess  at  intervals,  when  I  think  of 
rny  dear  native  England,  it  affects  me  in  a  very  particular  man 
ner.' "  Clive,  however,  found  one  solace.  The  Governor  of 
Madras  possessed  a  good  library,  and  permitted  Clive  to  have 
access  to  it :  he  devoted  much  of  his  leisure  to  reading,  and  ac 
quired  at  this  time  almost  all  the  knowledge  of  books  that  he 
ever  possessed.  As  a  boy  he  had  been  too  idle,  as  a  man  he  had 
become  too  busy,  for  literary  pursuits. 

His  career  of  prosperity  and  glory,  of  wounded  honor  and 
bodily  affliction,  has  been  vividly  drawn  by  Lord  Macaulay,  who 
considers  him  entitled  to  an  honorable  place  in  the  estimation 
of  po-terity.  From  his  first  visit  to  India,  dates  the  renown  of 
the  English  arms  in  the  East;  from  his  second  visit,  the 
political  ascendancy  of  the  English  in  that,  country ;  and  from 
his  third  visit,  the  purity  of  the  administration  of  our  Eastern 
empire,  which,  since  this  was  written,  the  wicked  ingratitude  of 
revolt  has  done  so  much  to  endanger. 


It  was  at  sea  that  Cook  acquired  those  high  scientific  accom 
plishments  by  which  he  became  the  first  circumnavigator  of  his 
day.  He  was  born  in  1728,  and  was  the  son  of  an  agricultural 
laborer  and  farm-bailiff,  at  Marton,  near  Stockton-upon-Tees. 
All  the  school  education  he  ever  had  was  a  little  reading,  writ 
ing,  and  arithmetic,  for  which  he  was  indebted  to  the  liberality 
of  a  gentleman  in  the  neighborhood.  He  was  apprenticed,  at 
the  age  of  13,  to  a  haberdasher  at  the  fishing-town  of  Staiths. 
near  Whitbv;  while  in  this  situation  he  was  first  seized  with  a 
passion  for  the  sea ;  and  having  procured  a  discharge  from  his 
master,  he  apprenticed  himself  to  a  firm  in  the  coal  trade  at 
Whitby,  on  board  a  coasting-vessel.  In  this  service  he  rose  to 
be  mate,  when,  in  1755,  being  in  the  Thames,  he  entered  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  royal  navy.  He  soon  distinguished  himself  so 
greatly  that  in  three  or  four  years  afterward  he  was  appointed 
master  of  the  Mercury,  which  belonged  to  a  squadron  then  pro 
ceeding  to  attack  Quebec.  Here  he  first  showed  the  proficiency 
he  had  already  made  in  the  scientific  part  of  his  profession  by 
constructing  an  admirable  chart  of  the  river  St.  Lawrence.  He 
felt,  however,  the  disadvantages  of  his  ignorance  of  mathemat 
ics  ;  and  while  still  assisting  in  the  hostile  operations  carrying 
on  against  the  French  on  the  coast  of  North  America,  he 
applied  himself  to  the  study  of  Euclid's  Elements,  which  he 
soon  mastered,  and  then  began  to  study  astronomy.  A  year  or 


222  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

two  after,  while  stationed  in  the  same  quarter,  he  communicated 
to  the  Royal  Society  an  account  of  a  solar  eclipse,  which  took 
place  August  5,  17GG  ;  deducing  from  it,  with  great  exactness 
and  skill,  the  longitude  of  the  place  of  observation.  lie  had 
now  completely  established  his  reputation  as  an  able  and  scien 
tific  seaman  ;  and  was  next  appointed  to  the  command  of  the 
Endeavour,  fitted  out  by  Government  for  the  South  Sea,  to 
observe  the  approaching  transit  of  the  planet  Venus  over  the 
sun's  disc,  which  he  most  satisfa<-torily  recorded,  besides  a  large 
accession  of  important  geographical  discoveries.  lie  was  next 
appointed  to  an  expedition  to  the  same  regions,  to  determine  the 
question  of  the  existence  of  a  south  polar  continent.  Of  this 
voyage,  Cook  drew  up  the  account,  which  is  esteemed  a  model  in 
that  species  of  writing. 

JOHN  HUNTER'S  WANT  OF  EDUCATION. 

The  well-known  John  Hunter,  one  of  the  greatest  anatomists 
that  ever  lived,  scarcely  received  any  education  whatever  until 
he  was  twenty  years  old.  lie  was  born  in  1728,  in  Lanarkshire, 
and  was  the  youngest  of  a  family  of  ten.  When  he  was  only 
ten  years  old,  his  father  died,  and  the  boy  was  left  to  act  as  he 
chose.  Such  was  his  aversion  at  this  lime  to  anything  like  reg 
ular  application,  that  he  could  scarcely  be  taught  even  the  ele 
ments  of  reading  and  writing;  while  an  attempt  that  was  made 
to  give  him  some  knowledge  of  Latin  (according  to  the  plan  of 
education  then  almost  universally  followed  in  regard  to  the  sons 
of  even  the  smallest  landed  proprietors  in  Scotland),  was,  after 
a  short  time,  abandoned  altogether.  Thus  Hunter  grew  up, 
spending  his  time  merely  in  country  amusements,  until  there 
was  no  provision  for  maintaining  him  longer  in  idleness.  So 
destitute  was  he  of  all  literary  acquirements,  that  he  could  only 
look  for  employment  of  his  hands,  rather  than  his  head.  He 
was  accordingly  apprenticed  to  his  brother-in-law,  a  carpenter, 
in  Glasgow,  with  whom  he  learned  to  make  chairs  and  tables ; 
and  this,  probably,  might  have  been  for  life  Hunter's  employ 
ment,  but  for  the  failure  of  his  master,  when  John  was  thrown 
out  of  work.  He  then  applied  to  his  elder  brother,  Dr.  William 
Hunter,  already  settled  in  London,  and  distinguished  as  a  lec 
turer  and  anatomical  demonstrator.  John  offered  his  services 
as  an  assistant  in  the  dissecting-room,  adding,  that  if  his  proposal 
should  not  be  accepted,  he  meant  to  enlist  in  the  army.  Fortu 
nately  for  science,  his  letter  was  answered  in  the  way  he  wished : 
he  came  to  London,  began  by  dissecting  an  arm,  and  so  succeeded, 
that  Dr.  Hunter  foretold  he  would  become  an  excellent  anato 
mist.  This  was  verified ;  but  he  never  entirely  overcame  the 


Anecdote  Biographies.  223 

disadvantages  entailed  upon  him  by  neglect  in  his  early  years. 
lie  attained  little  acquaintance  with  the  literature  of  his  own 
profession,  and  he  continued  to  the  end  of  his  life  an  awkward 
writer.  "If  these,"  says  Mr.  Craik,*  "were  heavy  penalties, 
however,  which  he  had  to  pay  for  what  was  not  so  much  his 
fault  as  that  of  others,  the  eminence  to  which  he  attained  in 
spite  of  them  is  only  the  more  demonstrative  of  his  extraordinary 
natural  powers,  and  his  determined  perseverance." 

EDMUND  BURKE  AT  BALLITORE  AND  DUBLIN. 

This  renowned  orator  and  statesman  was  born  in  Dublin,  on 
the  1st  of  January,  1730,  or,  as  the  register  of  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  states,  1728.  His  father,  Richard  Burke,  or  Bourke,  a 
Protestant,  and  of  good  iamily,  was  an  attorney  in  large  practice. 
His  mother  was  a  Miss  Nagle,  a  Roman  Catholic  lady,  and 
great-niece  of  Miss  Ellen  Nagle,  who  married  Sylvanus  Spenser, 
the  eldest  son  of  the  poet;  the  name  of  Edmund  may  possibly, 
therefore,  have  been  adopted  from  the  author  of  the  Faerie 
Queene  by  the  subject  of  the  present  memoir. 

During  his  boyhood,  Burke's  health  was  very  delicate,  even 
to  the  risk  of  consumption.  His  first  instructor  was  his  mother, 
a  woman  of  strong  mind,  cultivated  understanding,  and  fervent 
piety.  Many  years  of  his  childhood  were  passed  among  his 
maternal  relatives  in  the  south  of  Ireland,  especially  with  his 
grandfather  at  Castletown  Roche,  in  a  locality  teeming  with  the 
romance  of  history;  for  here,  at  Kilcolman  Castle,  Spenser  wrote 
his  Faerie  Queene;  and  here  lived  Essex  and  Raleigh.  It  is 
but  natural  to  suppose  that  here,  upon  the  beautiful  banks  of  the 
Blackwater,  England's  future  orator  imbibed  in  the  poetry  of 
the  Faerie  Queene  that  taste  for  ornate  and  eastern  imagery 
which  gave  such  splendor  to  his  eloquence ;  and  here,  amid  the 
memories  hanging  around  the  ruins  of  Kilcolman,  he  thirsted 
for  the  historic  knowledge  which  he  afterward  threw  with  such 
power  and  prophetic  force  into  his  reasoning  and  his  language."! 
He  was  an  ardent  admirer  of  the  epic  poet:  "Whoever  relishes 
and  reads  Spenser  as  he  ought  to  be  read,"  said  Burke  in  after 
life,  "will  have  strong  hold  of  the  English  language;"  and  there 
are  many  coincidences  of  expression  between  Burke  and 
Spenser. 

Young  Burke  learned  the  rudiments  of  Latin  from  a  school 
master  in  the  village  of  Glanworth,  near  Castletown  Roche. 
This  teacher,  O'Halloran,  afterward  boasted  that  "No  matter 
how  great  Master  Edmund  was,  he  was  the  first  who  had  ever 

*  Pursuit  of  Knowledge,  vol.  i.  t  Li&  of  Burke.    By  Peter  Burke.    1853. 


224  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

put  a  Latin  grammar  into  his  hands."  In  his  twelfth  year  he 
was  sent  with  his  brothers,  Garrett  and  Richard,  to  the  classical 
school  of  Ballitore,  in  the  county  of  Kildare,  then  kept  by 
Abraham  Shackleton,  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  and 
a  man  of  high  classical  attainments.  The  master  liked  his  pupil, 
and  the  pupil  became  fond  of  his  master;  and  during  the  two 
years  that  Burke  remained  at  Ballitore,  he  studied  diligently, 
and  laid  the  foundation  of  a  sound  classical  education.  Burke 
was  ever  grateful  to  his  excellent  tutor. 

In  the  House  of  Commons  he  paid  a  noble  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Abraham  Shackle- 
ton,  declaring  that  he  was  an  honor  to  his  sect,  though  that  sect  was  ono  of  the  purest. 
He  ever  considered  it  as  one  of  the  greatest  blessings  of  his  life  that  he  had  been  placed  at 
the  pood  Quaker's  academy,  and  readily  acknowledged  it  waa  to  Abraham  Shaekleton  that 
he  owed  the  education  that  made  him  worth  anything.*  A  member  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  hud  always  peculiar  claims  on  his  sympathy  and  regard  t  Burke's  bosom  friend 
at  Ballitore  was  Kichard  Shackleton,  the  schoolmaster's  Fon  :  they  read  together,  walked 
together,  and  composed  their  first  verses  together;  unlike  most  school-boy  ties,  which  sel 
dom  endure  the  first  rough  contact  with  the  world,  the  friendship  of  Burke  and  Shackle- 
ton  remained  fresh,  pure,  and  ardent,  until  the  close  of  their  existence. t 

Burke  entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  in  the  spring  of  1743. 
He  became,  in  174G,  a  scholar  of  the  house,  which  is  similar  to 
being  a  scholar  of  Christchurch,  Oxford.  Oliver  Goldsmith,  who 
was  at  Trinity  with  Burke,  states  that  he  did  not  distinguish 
himself  in  his  academical  exercises ;  and  Dr.  Leland,  another 
of  his  cotemporaries,  supports  Goldsmith's  statement.  But 
Burke  undoubtedly  acquired  at  Ballitore  a  good  knowledge  of 
the  ordinary  classics ;  and,  says  Mr.  Maeknight,  his  miscellane 
ous  reading  gave  him  more  extensive  views  than  could  be 
acquired  from  the  usual  text-books  of  the  college.  Burke,  says 
the  same  biographer,  seems  never  to  have  thought  of  applying 
himself  systematically  to  one  branch  of  study,  or  seriously 
labored  to  acquire  gold  medals,  prize-books,  and  worldly  dis 
tinctions.  But  the  longer  he  remained  at  college,  the  more 
desultory  his  course  of  study  became:  he  took  up  violently  with 
natural  philosophy — \\isfurormathematicus;  then  he  worked  at 

*  In  one  of  his  speeches,  when  he  was  50  years  old,  he  said  :  "  I  was  educated  a  Protest 
ant  of  the  Church  of  tngland  by  a  Dissenter  who  was  an  honor  to  his  sect.  Under  his 
eye,  I  read  the  Bible  morning,  noon,  and  night;  and  I  have  ever  since  been  a  happier  and 
a  better  man  for  such  reading/' — Works  and  Correspondence,  vol.  i.  p.  17,  quoted  in  The 
Life  and  Times  of  Edmund  Burke,  by  Thomas  Maeknight.  1858. 

t  When  Mr.  Burke  was  informed  that  Mr.  West  was  a  Quaker,  he  said  that  he  always 
regarded  it  among  the  most  fortunate  circumstances  of  bis  life  that  his  first  preceptor  was 
a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends. — Early  Life  and  Studusof  Benjamin  West,  vol.  ii.  p.  8. 

t  There  is  a  pleasing  anecdote  connected  with  Edmund  Burke's  subsequent  intercourse 
with  the  Shaokletons.  In  the  early  part  of  his  political  career,  he  was  officially  installed 
in  apartments  in  Dublin  Castle.  No  sooner  was  he  there,  than  his  good  friends  the  Shack- 
letons  hastened  to  pay  him  a  visit,  and,  of  course,  expected  to  find  the  incipient  states 
man,  whose  industry  was  already  a  public  theme,  immersed  in  Government  affairs.  What 
was  their  surprise  when,  on  entering  his  room,  they  caught  him  at  play  with  his  children  : 
he  was  on  all-fours,  carrying  one  of  them  on  his  back  round  the  room,  whilst  the  other,  & 
chubby  infant,  lay  crowing  with  delight  upon  the  carpet.  The  incident  recalls  a  eiuiil&r 
story  told  of  the  famous  Bourbon  prince,  Henry  the  Fourth. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  225 

logic — his  furor  logicus  ;  to  this  succeeded  his  furor  historicusi 
which  subsided  into  his  old  complaint,  furor  poeticus,  the  most 
dangerous  and  difficult  to  cure  of  all  these  forms  of  madness. 

Of  Burke's  favorite  authors,  many  accounts  have  been  given. 
His  letters  show  that  of  the  Roman  historians  Sallust  was  his 
delight.  He  preferred  Cicero's  Orations  to  his  Epistles ;  and 
his  frequent  quotation  of  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Ovid,  shows  how 
deeply  his  mind  was  imbued  with  their  classic  imagery.  There 
are  few  indications  of  his  application  to  Greek  literature.  Of 
modern  authors  he  took  most  pleasure  in  Milton,  whom  he  de 
lighted  to  illustrate  at  his  Debating  Society ;  yet,  he  greeted 
Ossian's  song  of  the  Son  of  Fingal  with  more  applause  than  he 
bestowed  on  Shakspeare.*  He  loved  Horace  and  Lucretius ; 
and  defended  against  Johnson  the  paradox  that  though  Homer 
was  a  greater  poet  than  Virgil,  yet  the  ^Eneid  was  a  greater 
poem  than  the  Iliad. 

While  at  college,  Burke  was  a  member  of  that  excellent  insti 
tution  of  juvenile  debate  for  the  use  of  the  students  of  Trinity, 
called  the  Historical  Society,  which  was  the  arena  not  only  of 
his  incipient  oratory,  but  of  that  of  many  others  among  the 
greatest  men  Ireland  has  produced. 

In  1748,  Burke  took  his  degree  of  B.A. ;  that  of  M.A.  he  ob 
tained  in  1751 ;  an'd  he  was  presented  with  the  further  degree  of 
LL.D.  in  1791.  Meantime,  having  been  intended  for  the  Eng 
lish  bar,  he  had  entered  at  the  Middle  Temple  in  1747;  and 
early  in  1750,  he  left  Dublin  for  London. 

Burke's  college  career  was  free  from  vice  or  dissipation. 

A  high  moral  tone  and  dignified  bearing,  tempered  as  they  were  by  an  extreme  urbanity 
of  manner,  and  a  wonderful  power  of  charming  in  conversation,  had  already  become  his 
characteristics  ;  already,  too,  his  company  was  sought  among  the  fashionable,  as  much  as 
among  the  learned,  lie  had  that  great  art  of  good  breeding  which  rendered  men  pleased 
with  him  and  with  themselves.  He  had  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  discourse,  either  serious 
or  jocose,  seasoned  with  wit  and  humor,  poignant,  strong,  delicate,  sportive,  as  answered 
the  purpose  or  occasion.  He  had  a  vast  variety  of  anecdotes  and  stories,  which  were 
always  well  adapted  and  well  told;  he  had  al>o  a  constant  cheerfulness  and  high  spirits. 
His  looks  and  voice  were  in  unison  with  the  agreeable  insinuation  and  impressiveness  of 
his  conversation  and  mariners.  Possessing  these  attractions— his  lasting  possessions  —  it 
wan  no  wonder  that  at  all  times  Burke  found  it  easy  to  Lave  whatever  associates  he  liked  j 
at  d  he  always  chose  the  best. — Peter  Bur..e. 

*  Yet,  Burke  perfected  his  oratory  by  studying  Shakspeare.  He  is  thought  to  have 
overrated  Ossian  to  please  Macpherson,  who,  being  the  agent  of  the  Nabob  of  Arcot,  had 
probably  laid  Burke  under  obligation  by  affording  him  information  on  Indian  affairs. 

Burke  was  more  of  a  versifier  in  his  youth  than  was  ever  supposed  until  some  time  after 
his  di-ath.  When  Sir  James  Mackintosh  said  that  had  Burke  ever  acquired  the  habit  of 
versification,  he  would  have  poured  forth  volumes  of  sublime  poetry  ( Mackintosh's  Met/<oirst 
by  his  Son),  he  little  suspected  that  while  he  was  at  Trinity  College,  the  great  statesman 
and  philosopher  was  the  most  inveterate  of  versifiers  He  seldom  wrote  a  letter  to  a  friend 
without  inclosing  him  some  specimens  of  his  verse  which,  though  rarely  above  common 
place,  breathe  a  sincere  love  of  all  that  is  virtuous,  beautiful,  and  pious  ;  he  continued  his 
poetical  efforts  longer,  and  met  with  less  success,  than  any  man  who  ever  engaged  in  polit 
ical  life  with  a  tenth  part  of  his  qualifications. — Muclcnight,  vol.  i.  p.  26. 

15 


226  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


COWPER    AT    WESTMINSTER. 

William  Cowper,  "  the  most  popular  poet  of  his  generation, 
and  the  best  of  English  letter-writers,"  was  the  son  of  Dr.  John 
Cowper,  rector  of  Great  Berkhampstead,  Herts,  and  was  born 
at  the  parsonage-house,  in  1731.  In  his  sixth  year  he  lost  his 
mother,  of  whom  he  always  retained  the  most  affectionate  recol 
lection  :  the  deprivation  of  her  tenderness  laid  the  seeds  of  those 
infirmities  which  afterward  afflicted  his  manhood.  In  the  year 
of  his  mother's  death,  he  was,  as  he  himself  describes  it,  "taken 
from  the  nursery,  and  from  the  immediate  care  of  a  most  indul 
gent  mother,"  and  sent  out  of  his  father's  house  to  a  consider 
able  school  kept  by  a  Dr.  Pitman,  at  Market-street.  Here  for 
two  years  he  suffered  much  from  ill-treatment  by  his  rough  com 
panions:  his  sensibility  and  delicate  health  were  the  objects  of 
their  cruelty  and  ridicule  ;  and  one  boy  so  relentlessly  persecuted 
him  that  he  was  expelled,  and  Cowper  was  removed  from  the 
school.  Cowper  retained  in  late  years  a  painful  recollection  of 
the  terror  with  which  this  boy  inspired  him.  "His  savage 
treatment  of  me,"  he  says,  "  impressed  such  a  dread  of  his  fig 
ure  on  my  mind,  that  I  well  remember  being  afraid  to  lift  my 
eyes  upon  him  higher  than  his  knees ;  and  that  I  knew  him 
better  by  his  shoe-buckle  than  by  any  other  part  of  his  dress." 
To  the  brutality  of  this  boy's  character,  and  the  general  im 
pression  left  upon  Cowper's  mind  by  the  tyranny  he  had  under 
gone  at  Dr.  Pitman's,  may  be  traced  Cowper's  prejudice  against 
the  whole  system  of  public  education,  so  forcibly  expressed  in 
his  poem  called  Tirocinium;  or,  a  Review  of  Schools. 

About  this  time  Cowper  was  attacked  with  an  inflammation 
in  the  eyes,  and  was  placed  in  the  house  of  an  oculist,  where  he 
remained  two  years,  and  was  but  imperfectly  cured. 

At  the  end  of  this  time,  at  the  age  of  ten,  he  was  removed  to 
Westminster  School.  The  sudden  change  from  the  isolation  of 
the  oculist's  house  to  the  activity  of  a  large  public  school,  and 
the  collision  with  its  variety  of  characters  and  tempers,  helped 
to  feed  and  foster  the  moods  of  dejection  to  which  Cowper  was 
subject.  His  constitutional  despondency  was  deepened  by  his 
sense  of  solitude  in  being  surrounded  by  strangers ;  and  thus, 
thrown  in  upon  himself,  he  took  refuge  in  brooding  over  his 
spiritual  condition.  This  tendency  had  first  manifested  itself  at 
Dr.  Pitman's  school,  and  next  at  Westminster.  Passing  one 
evening  through  St.  Margaret's  churchyard,  he  saw  a  light  glim 
mering  at  a  distance  from  the  lantern  of  a  grave-digger,  who,  as 
Cowper  approached,  threw  up  a  skull  that  struck  him  on  the  leg. 
a  This  little  incident,"  he  observes,  "  was  an  alarm  to  my  con- 


Anecdote  Biographies.  227 

science ;  for  the  event  may  be  remembered  among  the  best 
religious  documents  I  received  at  Westminster."  He  sought 
hope  in  religious  consolations,  and  then  hopelessly  abandoned 
them ;  and  he  was  struck  with  lowness  of  spirits,  and  intimations 
of  a  consumptive  habit,  which  the  watchful  sympathies  of  home 
might  possibly  have  averted  or  subdued. 

Nevertheless,  Cowper  appears  to  have  been  sufficiently  strong 
and  healthy  to  excel  at  cricket  and  football ;  and  he  persevered 
so  successfully  in  his  studies,  that  he  stood  in  high  favor  with 
the  master  for  his  scholarship.  Looking  back  many  years  after 
ward  on  this  part  of  his  life,  he  only  regretted  the  lack  of  his 
religious  instruction.  Latin  and  Greek,  he  complains,  were  all 
that  he  acquired.  The  duty  of  the  school-boy  absorbed  every 
other,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  periodical  preparations 
for  confirmation,  to  which  we  find  this  interesting  testimony  in 
his  letters : 

"  That  I  may  do  justice  to  the  place  of  my  education,  I  must  relate  one  mark  of 
religious  discipline,  which,  in  my  time,  was  observed  at  Westminster  ;  I  mean  the  pains 
which  Dr.  Nichols  took  to  prepare  us  for  confirmation.  The  old  man  acquitted  himself  of 
this  duty  like  one  who  had  a  deep  sense  of  its  importance  ;  and  I  believe  most  of  us  were 
struck  by  his  manner,  and  affected  by  his  exhortations." 

Cowper  translated  twenty  of  Vinny  Bourne's  poems  into  Eng 
lish,  and  his  allusions  to  his  old  favorite  usher  of  the  fifth  form 
at  Westminster  are  frequent.* 

"I  remember  (says  Cowper)  seeing  the  Duke  of  Richmond  set  fire  to  Vinny 's  greasy 
locks,  and  box  his  ears  to  put  it  out  again."  And  again,  writing  to  Mr.  Rose,  Cowper  gays: 
"  I  shall  have  great  pleasure  in  taking  now  and  then  a  peep  at  my  old  friend,  Vincent 
Bourne;  the  neatest  of  all  men  in  his  versification,  though,  when  I  was  under  his  usher- 
ship  at  Westminster,  the  most  slovenly  in  his  person  lie  was  so  inattentive  to  his  boys, 
and  so  indifferent  whether  they  brought  good  or  bad  exercises,  or  none  at  all.  that  he 
seemed  determined,  as  he  was  the  best,  so  he  should  be  the  last,  Latin  poet  of  the  West 
minster  line  ;  a  plot,  which  I  believe  he  exercised  very  successfully  :  for  I  have  not  heard 
of  any  one  who  has  at  all  deserved  to  be  compared  with  him,"  Even  in  the  time  of  his 
last  illness,  we  find  that  Cowppr's  dreary  thoughts  were,  for  the  moment,  charmed  away 
by  the  poems  of  his  old  favorite,  Vincent  Bourne. 

Among  Cowper's  cotemporaries  at  Westminster  were  William 
(afterward  Sir  William)  Russell,  whose  premature  death  he  had 
early  occasion  to  deplore;  Cumberland,  the  essayist,  with  whom 

*  Vincent  or  Vinny  Bourne,  the  elegant  Latin  poet,  and  usher  of  Westminster  Schoo], 
where  he  was  educated,  died  in  1747.  Cowper  has  left  also  this  feeling  tribute  to  his  old 
tutor  : 

"  I  love  the  memory  of  Vinny  Bourne.  I  think  him  a  better  Latin  poet  than  Tibullus, 
Propertius,  Ausonius,  or  any  of  the  writers  in  his  way,  except  Ovid,  and  not  at  all  inferior 

to  him It  is  not  common  t  >  meet  with  an  author  who  can  make  you  smile, 

and  yet  at  nobody's  expense  ;  who  is  always  entertaining,  and  yet  always  harmless  ;  and 
who,  though  always  elegant,  and  classical  in  a  degree  not  always  found  even  in  the  classics 
themselves,  charms  more  by  the  simplicity  and  playfulness  of  his  ideas  than  by  the  neatness 
and  purity  of  his  verse  :  yet  such  was  poor  Vinny." 

Vinny's  Latin  translations  of  the  ballads  of  "  Tweedside,"  "William  and  Margaret," 
and  Howe's  u  Despairing  beside  a  Clear  Stream,"  in  sweetness  of  numbers  and  elegant  ex 
pressions  equal  the  originals,  and  are  considered  scarcely  inferior  to  anything  in  Ovid  or 
Tibuilus. 


228  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

he  lodged ;  Impey,  and  Hastings,  afterward  distinguished  in 
India;  and  G.  Column,  Lloyd,  and  Churchill;  these,  with  a  few 
other  Westminster  men,  limited  to  seven,  formed  the  Nonsense 
Cluh.  Cowper  likewise  speaks  of  the  five  brothers  Bagot,  his 
school-fellows,  as  "  very  amiable  and  valuable  boys."  With  one 
of  them,  Walter  Bagot,  he  renewed  his  intimacy  twenty  years 
after  they  left  school:  '*!  felt  much  affection  for  him,"  says 
Cowper;  and  the  more  so,  because  it  was  plain  that  after  so 
long  a  time  he  still  retained  his  for  me."  Such  a  renewal  of 
school-friendship  is  very  rare. 

Cowper  was  taken  from  Westminster  at  eighteen.  He  has 
left,  amidst  many  recollections  of  a  less  cheerful  cast,  the  follow 
ing  pleasing  picture : 

Be  it  a  weakness,  it  deserves  some  praise, 

We  love  the  piny-place  of  our  early  days  j 

The  scene  is  touching,  and  the  heart  is  stone 

That  feels  not  at  the  sight,  and  feels  at  none. 

The  walls  on  which  wo  tried  our  graving  skill, 

The  very  name  we  carved,  subsisting  still ; 

The  bench  on  which  we  sat  while  deep  employed, 

Though  mangled,  hacked,  and  hewed,  not  yet  destroyed  ; 

The  little  ones,  unbuttoned,  glowing  hot, 

Playing  our  games,  and  on  the  very  spot; 

As  happ.v  as  we  once,  to  kneel  and  draw 

The  chalky  ring,  and  knuckle  down  at  taw  ; 

To  pi'oh  the  ball  into  the  grounded  hat, 

Or  drive  it  devious  with  a  dextrous  pat ; 

The  pleasing  spectacle  at  once  excited 

Such  recollection  of  our  own  delights, 

That,  viewing  it,  we  seem  almost  to  attain 

Our  innocent,  sweet  simple  years  again. 

This  fond  attachment  to  the  well-known  place, 

Whence  first  we  started  into  life's  long  race, 

Maintains  its  hold  with  such  unfailing  sway, 

We  feel  it  even  in  age,  and  at  our  latest  daj. 

WARREN    HASTINGS     AT    WESTMINSTER. 

Few  men  stand  so  prominently  from  the  historic  canvas  of  the 
eighteenth  century  as  Warren  Hasting?,  the  first  Governor- 
General  of  Bengal.  lie  was  born  in  1732,  and  left  a  little 
orphan,  destined  to  strange  and  memorable  vicissitudes  of  for 
tune.  Of  his  childhood,  Lord  Macaulay  has  painted  this  impres 
sive  picture : 

"The  child  was  sent  early  to  the  village  school  (of  Daylsford,  in  Worcestershire),  where 
ho  learned  his  letters  on  the  same  bench  with  the  sons  of  the  peasantry  ;  nor  did  anything 
in  bis  garb  or  fare  indicate  that  his  life  was  to  take  a  widely  different  course  from  that  of 
the  young  rustics  with  whom  he  studied  and  played.  But  no  cloud  could  overcast  thtt 
dawn  of  so  much  genius  and  so  much  ambition  The  very  plowmen  observed,  and  long 
remembered,  how  kindly  little  Warren  took  to  his  book.  \\  hen  he  was  eighr  jears  old  he 
went  up  to  London,  and  was  sent  to  a  school  at  Newington,  where  he  was  well  taught  but 
ill  fed.  He  always  attributed  the  smallness  of  his  stature  to  the  hard  and  scanty  fare  of 
this  seminary.  At  tm,  he  was  removed  to  Westminster  school.  Vinny  Bourne  was  one  of 
the  masters.  Churchill,  Colman.  Lloyd,  Cumberland,  Cowper.  were  among  the  students. 
Warren  was  distinguished  among  his  comrades  as  an  excellent  swimmer,  boatman,  and 
•chohir.  At  fourteen,  he  was  first  in  the  examination  for  the  foundation.  His  name  in 
gilded  letters  on  the  walls  of  the  dormitory  still  attests  his  victory  over  many  elder  com 
poorj.  lie  stayed  two  years  longer  at  the  school,  und  was  looking  f  rward  to  a  student" 


Biographies.  229 

ship  at  fhristchurch,  when  he  was  removed  from  Westminster  to  fill  a  writcrship  obtained 
for  him  in  the  service  of  the  Ea,«t  India  Company.  He  was  placrd  for  a  few  months  at  a 
commercial  academy,  to  study  arithmetic  and  book-keeping ;  and  in  January,  1750,  a  few 
days  after  he  had  completed  his  seventeenth  year,  he  sailed  for  Bengal,  and  arrived  at  his 
destination  in  the  October  following  " 

It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  Warren  Hastings  was  removed 
from  Westminster  through  the  death  of  his  uncle,  who  bequeathed 
him  to  the  care  of  a  friend,  who  was  desirous  to  get  rid  of  his 
charge  as  soon  as  possible.  Dr.  Nichols,  the  head-master  at 
Westminster,  made  strong  remonstrances  against  the  removal  of 
a  youth  who  seemed  likely  to  be  one  of  the  first  scholars  of  the 
age.  He  even  offered  to  bear  the  expense  of  sending  his  favorite 
pupil  to  Oxford.  But  the  guardian  was  inflexible,  obtained  for 
the  youth  the  writership,  and  he  was  sent  to  India.  Here  he 
rose  through  indomitable  force  of  will,  which  was  the  most 
striking  peculiarity  of  his  character,  to  be  Governor-General  of 
Bengal.  Lord  Macaulay  touchingly  says: 

<;  When,  under  a  tropical  sun,  he  ruled  fifty  millions  of  Asiatics,  his  hopes,  amidst  all  the 
cares  of  war,  finance,  and  legislation,  still  pointed  to  Dayleford.  And  when  his  long  pub 
lic  life,  so  singularly  chequered  with  good  and  evil,  with  glory  and  obloquy,  had  at  length 
closed  for  ever,  it  was  to  Daylsford  he  retired  to  die." 

GIBBON,    THE    HISTORIAN HIS    SCHOOLS    AND    PLAN    OF 

STUDY. 

Edward  Gibbon,  the  celebrated  historian,  was  born  at  Putney, 
in  Surrey,  1737,  in  a  house  situated  between  the  roads  which 
lead  to  Wandsworth  and  Wimbledon. 

From  his  own  account  we  learn  that  in  childhood  Gibbon's 
health  was  delicate,  and  that  his  early  education  was  principally 
conducted  by  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Porter.  At  the  age  of  nine,  he  was 
sent  to  a  boarding-school  at  Kingston-upon-Thames,  where  he 
remained  two  years,  but  made  little  progress,  on  account  of  his 
ill-health.  The  same  cause  prevented  his  attention  to  study  at 
Westminster  School,  whither  he  was  sent  in  1749;  and  "his 
riper  age  was  left  to  acquire  the  beauties  of  the  Latin  and  the 
rudiments  of  the  Greek  tongue."  After  residing  for  a  short 
time  with  the  Rev.  Philip  Francis,  the  translator  of  Horace,  he 
was  removed,  in  1752,  to  Oxford,  where  he  matriculated  as  a 
gentleman  commoner  of  Magdalen  College,  in  his  fifteenth  year. 
Though  his  frequent  absence  from  school  had  prevented  him 
from  obtaining  much  knowledge  of  Latin  and  Greek,  his  love  of 
reading  had  led  him  to  peruse  many  historical  and  geographical 
works ;  and  he  arrived  at  Oxford,  according  to  his  own  account, 
"  with  a  stock  of  erudition  that  might  have  puzzled  a  doctor,  and 
a  degree  of  ignorance  of  which  a  school-boy  would  have  been 
ashamed."  His  imperfect  education  was  not  improved  during 
his  residence  at  Oxford :  his  tutors  he  describes  as  easy  men, 


230  School-Days  of  Eminent  Ulen. 

who  preferred  receiving  their  fees  to  attending  to  the  instruction 
of  their  pupils;  and  after  leading  a  somewhat  dissipated  life  for 
fourteen  months,  he  embraced  the  Roman  Catholic  faith. 

With  the  object  of  reclaiming  Gibbon  to  Protestantism,  his 
father  sent  him  to  Lausanne,  in  Switzerland,  to  reside  with  M. 
Pavillard,  a  Calvinist  minister,  whose  arguments  and  Gibbon's 
own  studies  led  him  in  the  following  year  to  profess  his  belief 
in  the  doctrines  of  the  Protestant  church.  He  remained  in 
Switzerland  for  five  years,  during  which  time  he  studied  hard,  to 
remedy  the  defects  of  his  early  education.  He  had  now  become 
perfectly  acquainted  with  the  French  language,  in  which  he 
composed  his  first  work.  His  biographer,  Lord  Sheffield,  ob 
serves  that  "  Gibbon's  residence  at  Lausanne  was  highly  favor 
able  to  his  progress  in  knowledge,  and  the  formation  of  regular 
habits  of  study;"  to  this  fortunate  period  of  retirement  and 
application,  he  was  chiefly  indebted  for  his  future  reputation  as 
a  writer  and  a  thinker;  and  for  his  production  of  the  History  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  most  brilliant 
work  in  modern  historical  literature. 

ARCHDEACON    PALEY    AT    CAMBRIDGE. 

Paley  w*,s  fortunate  in  his  education.  lie  was  born  at  Peter 
borough,  in  1743:  during  his  infancy,  his  father  removed  to 
Giggleswiek,  in  Yorkshire,  having  been  appointed  head-master  of 
King  Edward's  School,  in  that  place.  He  was  educated  under 
his  paternal  roof,  and  soon  distinguished  himself  by  great  abili 
ties,  a  studious  disposition,  and  a  rare  ripeness  of  intellect.  In 
his  seventeenth  year  he  was  entered  a  sizar  of  Christ's  College, 
Cambridge;  when  his  father  declared  that  he  would  turn  out 
a  very  great  man,  for  he  had  by  far  the  clearest  head  he  had 
ever  met  with  in  his  life.  The  event  fully  verified  his  parent's 
declaration.  lie  graduated  in  17G3,  and  was  senior  wrangler. 
After  completing  his  academical  course,  he  became  tutor  in  an 
academy  at  Greenwich;  next  curate  of  Greenwich;  and  fellow 
of  his  College,  and  lectured  in  the  University  on  Moral  Philos 
ophy  and  the  Greek  Testament.  Among  his  preferments  he 
received  the  archdeaconry  of  Carlisle.  As  a  writer  he  is  dis 
tinguished  for  power  of  intellect,  skill  in  argument,  and  strong, 
exact,  and  clear  style.  His  great  works  are  on  Moral  and 
Political  Philosophy,  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,  and  Natural 
Theology.  Both  in  his  metaphysical  and  ethical  views,  Paley 
was  a  follower  of  Locke.  His  merits  are  thus  summed  up  by 
Bishop  Turton: 

t;  It  has  long  been  deemed  the  glory  of  Socrates,  that  he  hrought  Philosophy  from  thn 
schools  of  thfl  iuarned  to  the  habitations  of  men— by  stripping  it  of  ks  tcchuicaliticp,  and 


Anecdote  Biographies.  231 

exhibiting  it  in  the  ordinary  language  of  life.  There  is  no  one  in  modern  times  who  has 
possessed  the  talent  and  disposition  lur  achievements  of  this  kind  to  an  equal  extent  with 
1'aley  ;  and  WH  can  scarcely  conceive  any  one  to  have  employed  such  qualities  wish  greater 
success.  The  transmutation  of  metals  into  gold  was  the  supreme  object  of  the  alch)  mist's 
aspirations.  But  1'aley  had  acquired  a  more  enviable  power.  Knowledge,  however  ab- 
Btruee,  by  passing  through  his  mind,  became  plain  common  sense— stamped  with  the  char 
acters  which  insured  it  currency  in  the  world." 

Paley  thus  strikingly  remarks  on  Teaching : 

Education,  in  the  most  extensive  sense  of  the  word,  may  comprehend  every  preparation 
that  is  made  in  our  youth  for  the  sequel  of  our  lives  ;  and  in  this  sense  I  use  it.  Some 
such  preparation  is  necessary  for  all  conditions,  because  without,  it  they  must,  be  miserable, 
and  probably  will  be  vicious  when  they  grow  up.  either  from  the  want,  of  the  means  of 
subsistence,  or  from  want  of  rational  and  inoffensive  occupation.  In  civilized  life,  every 
thing  is  effected  by  art  and  skill.  Whence,  a  person  who  is  provided  with  neither  (and 
neither  can  be  acquired  without  exercise  and  instruction)  will  be  useless;  and  he  that  is 
useless  will  generally  he  at  the  same  time  mischievous  to  the  community  So  that  to  send 
an  uneducated  child  into  the  world,  is  injurious  to  the  rest  .of  mankind;  it  is  litllo  better 
than  to  turn  out  a  mad  dog  or  a  wild  beast  into  the  streets. 

SIR  JOSEPH  BANKS  AT  ETON. 

This  distinguished  naturalist,  and  great  friend  to  the  advance 
ment  of  science,  was  born  in  Argyle-street,  London,  in  1743. 
He  received  his  earliest  education  under  a  private  tutor  ;  at  nine 
years  of  age,  he  was  sent  to  Harrow  School,  and  was  removed, 
when  thirteen,  to  Eton.  Ho  is  described  in  a  letter  from  his 
tutor  as  being  well-disposed  and  good-tempered,  but  so  immo 
derately  fond  of  play,  that  his  attention  could  not  be  fixed  to 
study.  When  fourteen,  he  was  found,  for  the  first  time,  reading 
during  his  hours  of  leisure.  This  sudden  turn,  Banks,  at  a  later 
period,  explained  to  his  friend,  Sir  Everard  Home.  One  fine 
summer  evening,  he  bathed  in  the  Thames,  as  usual,  with  other 
boys,  but  having  stayed  a  long  time  in  the  water,  he  found,  when 
he  came  to  dress  himself,  that  all  his  companions  were  gone: 
he  was  walking  leisurely  along  a  lane,  the  sides  of  which  were 
richly  enameled  with  flowers ;  he  stopped,  and  looking  round, 
involuntarily  exclaimed,  "  How  beautiful !"  After  some  reflec 
tion,  he  said  to  himself,  "it  is  surely  more  natural  that  I  should 
be  taught  to  know  all  these  productions  of  nature,  in  preference 
to  Greek  and  Latin ;  but  the  latter  is  my  father's  command, 
and  it  is  my  duty  to  obey  him:  "I  will,  however,  make  myself 
acquainted  with  all  these  different  plants  for  my  own  pleasure 
and  gratification."  He  began  immediately  to  teach  himself 
botany;  and  for  want  of  more  able  tutors,  submitted  to  be  in 
structed  by  the  women  employed  in  "culling  simples,"  to  sup- 
p!y  the  druggists'  and  apothecaries'  shops ;  he  pajd  sixpence  for 
every  material  piece  of  information.  While  at  home  for  the  ensu 
ing  holidays,  he  found  in  his  mother's  dressing-room,  to  his  great 
delight,  a  book  in  which  all  the  plants  he  had  met  with  were  not 
only  described,  but  represented  by  engravings.  This  proved  to 
be  Gerard's  Herbal,  which,  although  one  of  the  boards  was  lost 


232  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

and  several  leaves  were  torn  out,  young  Banks  carried  with  him 
to  Eton,  where  he  continued  his  collection  of  plants,  and  also 
made  one  of  butterflies  and  other  insects.  Lord  Brougham 
states  that  his  father,  who  was  Banks's  intimate  friend,  describes 
him  as  "a  remarkably  fine-looking,  strong,  and  active  boy,  whom 
no  fatigue  could  subdue,  and  no  peril  daunt;  and  his  whole  time, 
out  of  school,  was  given  up  to  hunting  after  plants  and  insects, 
making  a  hortus  siccus  of  the  one,  and  forming  a  cabinet  of  the 
other.  As  often  as  Banks  could  induce  him  to  quit  his  task  in 
reading  or  in  verse-making  (says  Lord  Brougham),  he  would 
take  him  on  his  long  rambles;  and  I  suppose  it  was  from  this 
early  taste  that  we  had  at  Brougham  so  many  butterflies,  beetles, 
and  other  insects,  as  well  as  a  cabinet  of  shells  and  fossils ;  but 
my  father  always  said  that  his  friend  Joe  cared  mighty  little  for 
his  book,  and  could  not  understand  any  one  taking  to  Greek  and 
Latin." 

Banks  left  Eton  at  eighteen,  and  was  entered  a  gentleman- 
commoner  at  Christchurch,  Oxford,  in  December,  1760.  His 
love  of  botany,  which  commenced  at  school,  increased  at  the 
University,  and  there  his  mind  warmly  embraced  all  other 
branches  of  natural  hbtory.  Finding  there  were  no  lectures 
given  on  botany,  by  permission,  he  engaged  a  botanical  professor 
from  Cambridge,  to  lecture  at  Oxford,  his  remuneration  to  be 
derived  from  the  students  who  formed  his  class.  Mr.  Banks 
soon  made  himself  known  in  the  University  by  his  superior 
knowledge  of  natural  history. 

"  He  once  told  me,"  says  Evcrard  Home,  a  that  when  he  first  went  to  Oxford,  if  ho  hap 
pened  to  come  into  any  party  of  students  in  which  they  were  discussing  questions  respt-ct- 
ing  Givck  authors,  some  of  them  would  call  out  '  Here  i.«  Bunks,  but  he  knows  nothing  of 
Greek!'  To  this  rebuke  he  would  make  no  reply,  but  said  to  himself,  I  will  very  soon 
excel  you  all  in  another  kind  of  knowledge,  in  my  mind  of  infinitely  greater  importance  ; 
and  not  long  after,  when  any  of  them  wanted  to  clear  up  a  point  of  natural  hbtory,  they 
said,  '  \Ve  must  go  to  Banks ! '  " 

He  left  Oxford  at  the  end  of  1763,  after  having  taken  an 
honorary  degree.  His  election  into  the  Royal  Society,  and  his 
presidency,  and  the  extension  of  science,  were  the  leading  ob 
jects  of  his  after-life,  during  the  last  thirty  years  of  which  all 
the  voyages  of  discovery  made  under  the  auspices  of  Govern 
ment  had  either  been  suggested  by  him  (Sir  Joseph),  or  had 
received  his  approbation  and  support,  lie  died  in  his  78th  year. 

SIR    WILLIAM   JONES    AT    HARROW. 

This  great  Oriental  scholar  was  born  in  London,  in  1746:  his 
father,  an  eminent  mathematician,  dying  when  his  son  was  only 
three  years  old,  the  education  of  young  Jones  devolved  upon  his 
mother,  a  woman  of  extensive  learning.  When  in  his  fifth  year. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  233 

the  imagination  of  the  young  scholar  was  caught  by  the  sublime 
descripiion  of  the  angel  in  the  10th  chapter  of  the  Apocalypse, 
and  the  impression  was  never  effaced.  In  1753,  he  was  placed 
at  Harrow  School,  under  Dr.  Thackeray,  and  continued  under 
Dr.  Sumner. 

Lord  Tei^nmouth  relates  that,  when  a  boy  at  Harrow,  Sir  W.  Jones  invented  a  political 
play,  in  which  Dr.  William  I5emiett,  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  and  Dr.  1'arr,  also  boys,  were  his 
principal  associates.  They  divided  the  fields  in  the  neighborhood  of  Harrow  according  to 
a  map  of  Greece,  into  states  and  kingdoms  :  each  fixed  upon  one  as  his  dominions,  and 
assumed  an  ancient  name.  Some  of  the  school-fellows,  as  barbarians,  invaded  their  ter 
ritories,  and  attacked  their  hillocks  or  fortresses.  The  chiefs  defended  their  respective  do 
mains  against  the  incursions  of  the  enemy  ;  and  in  these  imitative  wars  the  3  oung  states 
men  held  councils;  all  doubtless  very  boyish,  but  admirably  calculated  to  till  their 
minds  with  ideas  of  legislation  and  civil  government.  In  these  amusements,  Jones  was 
ever  the  leader. 

In  1764,  he  was  entered  of  University  College,  Oxford:  here 
his  taste  for  Oriental  literature  continued,  and  he  engaged  a 
native  of  Aleppo,  whom  he  had  discovered  in  London,  to  act  as 
his  preceptor;  he  also  assiduously  read  the  Greek  poets  and 
historians.  After  the  completion  of  his  academical  career, 
through  his  intimacy  with  Dr.  Sumner  and  Dr.  Parr,  Jones  re 
turned  to  Harrow  as  private  tutor  to  Lord  Althorpe,  after 
ward  Earl  Spencer.  A  fellowship  of  Oxford  was  also  conferred 
upon  him. 

Sir  W.  Jones,  in  addition  to  great  acquirements  in  other  de 
partments  of  knowledge,  made  himself  acquainted  with  no  fewer 
than  twenty-eight  different  languages,  lie  was  from  his  boy 
hood  a  miracle  of  industry.  He  used  to  relate  that  when  he 
was  only  three  or  four  years  of  age,  if  he  applied  to  his  mother, 
a  woman  of  uncommon  intelligence  and  acquirements,  for  in 
formation  upon  any  subject,  her  constant  answer  to  him  was, 
"  Read,  and  you  will  know."  He  thus  acquired  a  passion  for 
books,  which  only  grew  in  strength  with  increasing  years.  Even 
at  school  his  voluntary  exertions  exceeded  in  amount  his  pre 
scribed  tasks ;  and  Dr.  Thackeray,  one  of  his  masters,  was  wont 
to  say  of  him,  that  he  was  a  boy  of  so  active  a  mind,  that  if  he 
were  left  naked  and  friendless  upon  Salisbury  Plain,  he  would 
nevertheless  find  the  road  to  fame  and  riches.  At  this  time  he 
often  devoted  whole  nights  to  study,  when  he  generally  took 
coffee  or  tea  to  keep  off  sleep.  To  divert  his  leisure,  he  com 
menced  the  study  of  the  law ;  and  he  is  said  to  have  often  sur 
prised  his  mother's  legal  acquaintances  by  putting  cases  to  them 
from  an  abridgment  of  Coke's  Institutes,  which  he  had  read  and 
mastered.  In  after-life  his  maxim  was  never  to  neglect  any 
opportunity  of  improvement  which  presented  itself.  In  con 
formity  with  this  rule,  while  making  the  most  wonderful  exer 
tions  in  the  study  of  Greek,  Latin,  and  the  Oriental  languages, 


23 1  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

at  Oxford,  he  took  advantage  of  the  vacations  to  learn  riding 
and  fencing,  and  to  read  all  the  best  authors  in  Italian,  Spanish, 
Portuguese,  and  French ;  thus — to  transcribe  an  observation  of 
his  own  —  "with  the  fortune  of  a  peasant,  giving  himself  the 
education  of  a  prince." 

When  in  his  thirty-third  year,  Sir  William  Jones  resolved,  as 
appears  from  a  scheme  of  study  found  among  his  papers,  "to 
learn  no  more  rudiments  of  any  kind;  but  to  perfect  himself  in. 
first,  twelve  languages,  as  the  means  of  acquiring  accurate  knowl 
edge  of  history,  arts,  and  sciences."  These  were  the  Greek, 
Latin,  Italian,  French,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  Hebrew,  Arabic, 
Persian,  Turkish,  German,  and  English :  but  he  eventually  ex 
tended  his  researches  beyond  even  these  ample  limits.  He  made 
himself  not  only  completely  master  of  Sanscrit,  as  well  as  less 
completely  af  Ilindostanee  and  Bengalee,  but  to  a  considerable 
extent  also  of  the  other  Indian  dialects.  The  languages  which 
he  describes  himself  to  have  studied  least  perfectly  were  the 
Chinese,  Russian,  Runic,  Syrian,  Ethiopic.  Coptic,  Dutch,  Swe 
dish,  and  Welsh.  Yet,  Sir  William  Jones  died  at  the  early  age 
of  forty-seven. 

HOW   DR.   PARR    BECAME  A  PARSON    INSTEAD    OF    A    SURGEON. 

Samuel  Parr  was  born  at  Harrow-on-the-Hill,  in  1747,  where 
his  father  was  a  surgeon  and  apothecary.  It  was  the  accident 
of  his  binhplace  that  laid  the  foundation  of  his  fame;  for  he  was 
sent  to  the  grammar-school  at  Harrow  in  his  sixth  year.  In  his 
boyhood  he  wrs  studious  after  a  fashion,  delighting  in  Mother 
Goose  and  the  Seven  Champions,  and  little  caring  for  boyish 
sports.  One  day  he  was  seen  sitting  on  the  churchyard  gate  at 
Harrow,  with  great  gravity,  whilst  his  school-fellows  were  all  at 
play.  "  Sam,  why  don't  you  play  with  the  others  ?"  cried  a 
friend.  "  Do  not  you  know,  sir,"  said  Parr,  with  vast  solemnity, 
"  that  I  am  to  be  a  parson  ?"  When  nine  or  ten  years  old,  he 
would  put  on  one  of  his  father's  shirts  for  a  surplice,  and  read 
the  church  service  to  his  sisters  and  cousins,  after  they  had  been 
duly  summoned  by  a  bell  tied  to  the  banisters ;  preach  them  a 
sermon  ;  and  even  in  spite  of  his  father's  remonstrance,  would 
bury  a  bird  or  a  kitten  (Parr  had  always  a  great  fondness  for 
animals),  with  the  rites  of  Christian  burial.  At  school,  his 
masters  predicted  his  future  eminence;  but,  at  the  age  of  14, 
when  he  was  at  the  head  of  the  school,  he  was  removed  from  it, 
and  placed  in  his  father's  shop.  Here  he  criticised  the  Latin  of 
the  apothecary's  prescriptions,  and  showed  great  dislike  of  the 
business  ;  while  he  continued  his  classical  studies,  by  getting  one 
of  his  former  companions  to  report  to  him  the  master's  remarks 


Anecdote  Biographies.  235 

on  the  lesson  of  every  day,  as  it  was  read ;  and  Parr,  having  in 
vain  tried  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  business  for  three  years, 
was,  at  length,  sent  to  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
studied  hard  in  the  classics  arid  philology.  Soon  after,  his  father 
died,  and  he  was  compelled,  before  he  had  taken  a  degree,  to 
relinquish  his  academic  career,  when  he  became  an  under-master 
of  Harrow  School.  He  now  took  deacon's  orders  :  he  continued 
assistant-master  at  Harrow  five  years,  when  he  became  a  candi 
date  for  the  head-mastership,  but  was  defeated:  a  rebellion  en 
sued  among  the  boys,  many  of  whom  took  Parr's  parr,  and  he 
withdrew  to  Stanmore,  a  village  in  the  neighborhood,  where  he 
set  up  a  school,  followed  by  40  of  the  young  rebels.  Here  en 
sued  many  disappointments  and  struggles  with  misfortune,  which 
did  not,  however,  prevent  Parr  from  becoming  one  of  the  great 
est  scholars  of  his  time. 

Parr  himself  used  to  tell  of  Sir  "William  Jones,  another  of  his 
school-fellows,  that  as  they  were  one  day  walking  together  near 
Harrow,  Jones  suddenly  stopped  short,  and  looking  hard  at  him, 
cried  out,  "Parr,  if  you  should  have  the  good  luck  to  live  forty 
years,  you  may  stand  a  chance  of  overtaking  your  face." 

Dr.  Parr  quitted  Cambridge  with  deep  regret. 

il  I  left  Emmanuel  ("ollege  (he  says),  as  must  not  be  dissembled,  before  the  usual  time,  and 
in  truth  had  been  almost  compelled  to  leave  it,  not  by  the  want  oi  a  proper  euucation,  for 
1  had  arrived  in  the  first  place  of  the  first  form  of  Harrow  School  when  I  was  not  quite 
fourteen  ;  not  for  the  want  of  useful  tutors,  for  mine  were  eminently  able,  and  to  me  had 
been  uniformly  kind;  not  for  the  want  of  ambition,  for  I  had  begun  to  look  up  ardently 
and  anxiously  to  academical  distinctions ;  not  for  the  want  of  attachment  to  the  place,  for 
I  regarded  it  then,  as  I  continue  to  regard  it  now,  with  the  fondest  and  most  unfc-igned 
affection  ;  but  by  another  want  which  it  was  unnecessary  to  name,  and  for  the  supply  of 
which,  after  some  hesitation,  I  determined  to  provide  by  patient  toil  and  resolute  self- 
denial,  when  I  had  not  completed  my  twentieth  year.  I  ceased,  therefore,  to  reside,  with  an 
aching  heart ;  I  looked  back  wirh  mingled  fc;elings  of  regret  and  humiliation  to  advant 
ages  of  which  I  could  no  longer  partake,  and  honors  to  which  1  could  no  longer  aspire. 
The  unreserved  conversation  of  scholars,  the  disinterested  offices  of  friendship,  the  use  of 
valuable  books,  and  the  example  of  good  men,  are  endearments  by  which  Cambridge  will 
keep  a  strong  hold  upon  my  esteem,  my  respect,  and  my  gratitude  to  the  last  moment  of 
my  life." 

Dr.  Parr  has  left  this  striking  illustration,  enjoining  upon 
children  Tenderness  to  Animals  : 

"  Ho  that  can  look  with  rapture  upon  the  agonies  of  an  unoffending  and  unresisting 
animal,  will  soon  learn  to  view  the  sufferings  of  a  fellow-creature  with  indifference ;  and 
in  time  he  will  acquire  the  power  of  viewing  them  with  triumph,  if  that  fellow-creature 
should  become  the  victim  of  his  resentment,  be  it  just  or  unjust.  But  the  minds  of  chil 
dren  are  open  to  impressions  of  every  sort,  and,  indeed,  wonderful  ia  the  facility  with 
which  a  judicious  instructor  may  habituate  them  to  tender  emotions.  I  have,  therefore, 
always  considered  mercy  to  beings  of  an  inferior  species  as  a  virtue  which  children  are 
very  capable  of  learning,  but  which  is  most  difficult  to  be  taught  if  the  heart  has  been 
once  familiarized  to  spectacles  of  distress,  and  has  been  permitted  either  to  behold  the 
pangs  of  any  living  creature  with  cold  insensibility,  or  to  inflict  them,  with  wanton  bar 
barity." 


236  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 


LORDS  ELDON  AND  STOWELL  AT  NEWCASTLE  AND  OXFORD. 

John  Scott,  Earl  of  Eldon,  the  greatest  lawyer  of  his  time, 
and  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England  for  seven-and-twenty 
years,  was  the  son  of  Mr.  John  Scott,  coalfitter,  in  Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne,  and  was  born  in  that  town  in  1751.  His  elder 
brother,  Lord  Stowell,  was  born  in  1645,  under  circumstances  of 
some  peculiarity,  which  had  a  remarkable  effect  on  the  fortunes 
of  the  two  brothers  in  after-life.  The  story  is  thus  told : 

In  1745,  the  city  of  Edinburgh  having  surrendered  to  the  Pretender's  army,  his  road  to 
London  lay  through  Newcastle,  the  town-walls  of  which  bristled  with  cannon,  and  the 
place  was  otherwise  prepared  for  a  siege.  Mrs  Scott  was,  at  that  time,  in  such  a  condi 
tion  as  made  her  anxiou*  to  be  removed  to  a  more  quiet  place.  Thi.*,  however,  was  a  mutter 
of  some  difficulty  ;  for  Mr.  ScottV  house  was  situated  in  one  of  the  narrow  l;mes  of  New 
castle,  between  which  and  the  river  Tyne  ran  the  town-wall,  the  gates  of  which  were  closed 
and  fortified.  In  this  dilemma,  Mrs  Scott  was  plnced  in  a  basket,  and,  by  a»d  of  a  rope, 
hoisted  over  the  wall  to  the  water-side,  whence  a  boat  conveyed  her  to  Haworth,  a  village 
about  tour  miles  from  Newcastle,  but  on  the  southern  bank  of  the  Tyne :  and  h»-re,  within 
about  two  days  after  the  above  removal,  Mrs.  fccott  gave  birth  to  the  twins,  \\  illiam  and 
Barbara. 

Lord  Stowell  having  been  thus  born  in  the  county  of  Dur 
ham,  was  eligible  for  a  scholarship,  which  fell  vacant  for  that 
diocese,  in  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  which  he  succeeded 
in  obtaining ;  and  thus  laid  the  foundation,  not  only  of  his  own, 
but  of  his  still  more  successful  brother's  prosperity. 

Lord  Eldon  was  carefully  educated  at  home,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  old  school,  the  birch  being  freely  applied,  especially  for 
his  habit  of  telling  direct  untruths,  but  without  effecting  contri 
tion  for  the  offense.  This  is  stated  upon  the  authority  of  his 
anecdote-book,  where  he  recounts  sundry  instances  of  sturdy 
lying,  apparently  with  some  pride ;  yet,  there  was  constant 
serious  observance  at  home.  "I  believe,"  said  Lord  Eldon,  "I 
have  preached  more  sermons  than  any  one  that  is  not  a  clergy 
man.  My  father  always  had  the  Church  Service  read  on  the 
Sunday  evenings,  and  a  sermon  after  it.  Harry  and  I  used  to 
take  it  in  turns  to  read  the  prayers  or  to  preach :  we  always  had 
a  shirt  put  over  our  clothes  to  answer  for  a  surplice." 

John  and  William  were  sent  to  the  free  grammar-school  at 
Newcastle,*  where  John  seems  to  have  been  noted  as  a  lad  of 
great  abilities,  and  to  have  indicated  early  that  constant  activity 
of  mind  which  was  his  characteristic  throughout  life.  On  their 
teacher  in  the  school,  the  Rev.  Hugh  Moises,  the  Scotts  appear 
to  have  produced  a  feeling  of  very  deep  and  lasting  affection. 
With  great  pride  did  the  provincial  schoolmaster  watch  the  ris 
ing  footsteps  of  his  two  favorite  pupils;  and,  to  do  them  justice, 

*  At  this  school,  founded  and  endowed  by  the  Mayor  of  Newcastle,  in  1525,  Bishop 
Ridley,  the  poet  Akenside,  Lord  Collingwood,  and  other  eminent  persons,  received  the 
earlier  part  of  their  education. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  237 

they  seem  to  have  reciprocated  the  attachment.  Lord  Eldon 
kept  up  his  correspondence  with  his  old  preceptor,  amid  all  the 
honors  and  distinctions  which  future  years  showered  on  him. 
One  of  the  first  acts  of  his  Chancellorship  was  to  make  Mr. 
Moises  one  of  his  chaplains.  He  twice  afterward  offered  him 
still  more  substantial  preferment ;  this  the  old  man  declined,  but 
the  patronage  was  bestowed  upon  his  family. 

Lord  Stowell  having  gone  to  Oxford,  and  commenced  his 
career  with  great  success,  it  was  intended  that  John  should  fol 
low  his  father's  occupation.  His  brother,  however,  who  knew 
his  great  abilities,  would  not  allow  them  to  be  so  buried.  "  Send 
Jack  here,"  he  wrote  from  Oxford;  "I  can  do  better  for  him." 
And  to  Oxford  Jack  was  sent  accordingly,  and  entered  as  a  com 
moner  of  University  College,  in  the  year  17GG,  under  the  tutor 
ship  of  his  brother. 

The  only  distinction  which  Lord  Eldon  acquired  at  Oxford, 
was  gaining  the  Lichfi"ld  prize  by  an  "Essay  on  the  Advantages 
and  Disadvantages  of  Foreign  Travel."  He  took  his  Bachelor's 
degree,  and  intended  to  prosecute  his  studies  for  the  Church. 
But  an  event,  fortunately  as  it  turned  out,  averted  the  whole 
current  of  his  life.  He  fell  in  love  with  the  daughter  of  a  towns 
man  of  his  father's,  and  we  trace  half-stiiled  lamentations  in  his 
letters  to  his  companions  from  Oxford.  At  last,  he  eloped  with 
the  lady  to  Scotland  :  the  relations  were  highly  displeased  with 
the  match,  and  the  fortunes  of  the  bridegroom  were  supposed  to 
be  so  completely  marred  by  this  exploit,  that  a  wealthy  grocer 
in  Newcastle  offered  to  his  father  to  take  him  into  partnership, 
as  the  only  means  of  establishing  him  respectably.  The  pro 
posal  was  so  far  entertained  as  to  be  referred  to  William  Scott 
for  his  opinion ;  but  his  answer  in  the  negative  preserved  his 
brother  for  greater  things.  Lord  Eldon's  marriage,  however, 
rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  prosecute  his  views  toward  the 
church  with  any  chance  of  success,  unless  a  living  should  fall 
vacant  to  his  College  during  the  first  year:  he  accordingly 
resolved  to  turn  himself  to  the  law,  and  entered  in  the  Middle 
Temple,  in  January,  1773.  The  year  of  grace  passed  without 
any  College  living  becoming  vacant,  and  thus  was  his  destiny 
conclusively  fixed.  While  keeping  his  terms  in  the  Temple,  he 
continued  his  residence  at  Oxford,  assiduously  prosecuting  his 
legal  studies,  and  employed  partly  as  tutor  of  University  College, 
during  1774-75,  and  partly  as  Deputy  Professor  of  Law,  for 
which  service  he  received  GO/,  a  year.  He  relates  that  imme 
diately  after  he  was  married,  the  Law  Professor  sent  him  the  first 
lecture  to  read  immediately  to  the  students,  and  this  he  began 
without  knowing  a  single  word  that  was  in  it.  It  was  upon  the 


238  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

statute  of  young  men  running  away  with  young  maidens.  "  Fancy 
me,"  he  says,  "reading,  with  about  one  hundred  and  forty  boys 
and  young  men  all  giggling  at  the  Professor.  Such  a  tittering 
audience  no  one  ever  had  !" 

Lord  Eldon  well  remembered  Johnson  in  college  at  Oxford. 
He  relates  of  the  Doctor : 

"  If  put  out  of  tempe-,  he  was  not  very  moderate  in  the  terms  in  which  he  expressed 
his  displeasure.  I  remember  that  in  the  common-room  of  University  College,  he  was  dila 
ting  upon  some  subject,  and  the  then  head  of  Lincoln  College,  Dr  Mortimer,  was  present. 
Whilst  Johnson  was  stating  what  he  proposed  to  communicate,  the  Doctor  occasionally 
interrupted  him,  saying,  '  I  deny  that!'  This  was  ofU-n  repeated,  and  observed  upon  by 
Johnson,  an  it  was  repeated,  in  terms  expressive  of  exceeding  displeasure  and  anger.  At 
length,  upon  the  Doctor's  repeating  the  words  '  I  deny  that,'  'Sir,  sir,'  said  Johnson, 
'you  must  have  forgot  that  an  author  has  said,  I'lvs  negabit  units  asinu.t  in  una  hora, 
quam  centum  philosoplii  probavtrint  in  centum  unnis.'  " 

Lord  Eklon  finally  removed  to  London  in  1775,  but  with 
gloomy  prospects,  being  almost  without  a  sixpence  he  could  call 
his  own,  and  receiving  little  attention  from  his  father  and  other 
relations.  Indeed,  the  generosity  and  kindness  of  his  brother 
William,  for  which  in  after-life  he  was  always  deeply  grateful, 
were  chiefly  instrumental  in  enabling  him  to  prosecute  his  views 
for  the  bar.  He  first  lived  in  Cursitor-street,  of  which  he  used 
to  say:  "Many  a  time  have  I  run  down  from  Cursitor-street  to 
Fleet-market,  to  get  sixpenny  worth  of  sprats  for  supper."  Lord 
Eldon  was  called  to  the  bar  in  1776.  lie  waited  long  in  vain 
for  clients,  and  had  resolved  to  quit  Westminster  Hall,  to  seek 
his  native  city;  when  the  accident  of  a  leading  counsel's  sudden 
indisposition  introduced  him  to  the  notice  of  the  profession,  and 
his  success  at  the  bar  became  thenceforth  certain.* 

THE    TWO    BROTHERS    MILNER. 

These  eminent  churchmen  were  originally  Yorkshire  weavers, 
but  were,  by  fortuitous  circumstances,  well  educated.  Joseph 
Milner,  born  in  1744,  was  sent  to  the  grammar-school  at  Leeds, 
where,  by  his  industry  and  talents,  among  which  a  memory  of 
most  extraordinary  power  was  conspicuous,  he  gained  the  warm 
regard  of  his  instructor,  who  resolved  to  have  him  sent  to 
college.  This  plan  was  nearly  frustrated  by  the  death  of  Milner's 
father,  in  very  narrow  circumstances ;  but  by  the  assistance  of 
some  gentlemen  in  Leeds,  whose  children  Milner  had  lately 
engaged  in  teaching,  he  was  sent  to  Catherine  Hall,  Cambridge, 
at  the  age  of  18.  He  afterward  became  head-master  of  Hull 

*M  Vauxhall.  a  Public  School  for  140  boyg  was  founded  in  1829,  by  Mr.  Charles  Fran 
cis,  of  Belgrave  House.  l{  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  the  Earl  of  Kldon,  and  to  commem 
orate  his  able,  zealous,  and  constant  defense  of  the  Protestant  Reformed  Keligion  sgninst 
every  innovation  "  The  School-house,  a  Tudor  building,  is  adorned  with  a  statue  of  I.or-l 
Eldon,  upon  the  anniversary  of  whose  birthday,  June  4,  the  public  examination  of  the 
boys  takes  place. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  239 

grammar-school,  and  vicar  of  that  parish,  and  wrote  many 
learned  works,  of  which  his  History  of  the  Church  of  Christ  is 
the  principal. 

His  brother,  Isaac  Milner,  Dean  of  Carlisle,  born  in  1751,  at 
the  age  of  six  accompanied  him  to  the  Leeds  grammar-school ; 
but  at  his  father's  death,  he  was  taken  away  to  learn  the  woolen 
manufacture.  When  Joseph  Miiner  was  appointed  to  the  head- 
mastership  of  the  Hull  grammar-school,  he  released  his  brother 
from  his  engagements  at  Leeds,  and  took  him  under  his  own 
tuition,  employing  him  as  his  assistant  in  teaching  the  younger 
boys.  In  the  Lite  of  his  brother,  the  Dean  expresses  his  sense 
of  this  kindness  with  affectionate  warmth.  In  1770,  Isaac 
Milner  entered  Queen's  College,  Cambridge :  here  he  rose  to  be 
Lucasian  Professor  of  Mathematics,  and  he  was  twice  Vice- 
Chancellor.  He  became  the  intimate  friend  of  Mr.  Wilberforce 
and  Mr.  Pitt.  He  was  a  man  of  extensive  and  accurate  learn 
ing  ;  wrote  several  works ;  and  greatly  assisted  his  brother 
Joseph  in  his  History  of  the  Church. 

HOW    WILLIAM     GIFFOKD    BECAME     A     SCHOLAR    AND    C1UTIC. 

William  Gifford,  the  eminent  critic,  was  born  in  1755,  at 
Ashburton,  in  Devonshire ;  and  by  the  early  death  of  both 
parents,  was  left,  at  the  age  of  13,  penniless,  homeless,  and 
friendless.  He  had  learned  reading,  writing,  and  a  little  arith 
metic,  when  his  godfather  took  charge  of  him,  sent  him  again  to 
school ;  but  just  as  Gifford  was  making  considerable  progress  in 
arithmetic,  his  patron  grew  tired  of  the  expense,  and  took  him 
home  to  employ  him  as  a  plow-boy,  for  which,  however,  he  was 
unfit.  It  was  next  resolved  that  he  should  be  sent  to  Newfound 
land  to  assist  in  a  storehouse ;  but  for  this  he  was  declared  "  too 
small."  He  was  then  sent  as  a  cabin-boy,  on  board  a  coasting 
vessel,  where  he  remained  about  a  twelvemonth,  during  which 
time  the  only  book  he  saw  was  the  "  Coasting  Pilot."  His  god 
father  then  took  him  home,  and  sent  him  again  to  school,  where, 
in  a  few  months,  he  became  head  boy.  His  godfather  now 
thought  he  "had  learned  enough,  and  more  than  enough,  at 
school,"  and  apprenticed  him  to  a  shoemaker  at  Ashburton. 
But  Gifford's  strong  thirst  for  knowledge  had  not  abated :  mathe 
matics  at  first  were  his  favorite  study ;  and  he  relates  that,  for 
want  of  paper,  he  used  to  hammer  scraps  of  leather  smooth,  and 
work  his  problems  on  them  with  a  blunt  awl :  for  the  rest,  his 
memory  was  tenacious,  and  he  could  multiply  and  divide  by  it  to 
a  great  extent.  His  master  finding  his  services  worth  nothing, 
used  harsh  means  to  wean  him  from  his  literary  tastes ;  and 
Gifford,  hating  his  business,  sank  into  a  sort  of  savage  melan- 


240  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

choly.  From  this  state  he  was  withdrawn  by  the  active  kind 
ness  of  Mr.  Cookesly,  a  surgeon,  of  Ashburton,  who  had  seen 
some  rhymes  by  Giffbrd,  and  with  his  sad  story,  conceived  a 
strong  regard  for  him,  and  raised  "a  subscription  for  purchasing 
the  remainder  of  the  time  of  William  Gifford,  and  for  enabling 
him  to  improve  himself  in  writing  and  EnglL-h  grammar." 
Enough  was  collected  to  free  him  from  his  apprenticeship ;  he 
was  placed  at  school,  and  in  two  years  sent  to  Exeter  College, 
Oxford.  Not  long  after,  Mr.  Cookesley  died ;  but  a  more  effi 
cient  patron  was  raised  up  in  Earl  Grosvenor,  who  gave  Giffbrd 
a  home  in  his  own  mansion.  A  long  and  prosperous  life  fol 
lowed  :  he  executed  translations  of  Latin  poets  ;  edited  the  works 
of  Massinger,  Ben  Jonson,  Ford,  and  Shirley  ;  and  was  appoint 
ed  editor  of  the  Quarterly  Iteview  upon  its  first  establishment. 
He  died  in  1820,  leaving  the  bulk  of  his  fortune  to  the  son  of 
his  first  patron,  Mr.  Cookesley. 

LORD  NELSON'S  SCHOOLS  IN  NORFOLK. 

Horatio  Nelson  was  born  with  a  quick  good  sense,  an  affec 
tionate  heart,  and  a  high  spirit,  by  which  qualities  his  boyliood 
was  strongly  marked.  He  was  the  fifth  son  and  the  sixth  child 
of  Edmund  and  Catherine  Nelson  ;  his  birth  took  place  in  1758, 
in  the  parsonage-house  of  Burnham  Thorpe,  a  village  in  the 
county  of  Norfolk,  of  which  his  father  was  rector.  The  maiden 
name  of  his  mother  was  Suckling;*  her  grandmother  was  an 
elder  sister  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  and  this  child  was  named 
after  his  godfather,  the  first  Lord  Walpole.  Horatio  "was 
never  of  a  strong  body,"  says  Southey;  ''and  the  ague,  which 
was  at  that  time  one  of  the  most  common  diseases  in  England, 
had  greatly  reduced  his  strength  ;"  yet  he  very  early  gave  proofs 
of  that  resolute  heart  and  nobleness  of  mind  which,  during  his 
whole  career  of  labor  and  of  glory,  so  eminently  distinguished 
him.  When  a  mere  child,  he  strayed  a  bird's-nesting  from  his 
grandmother's  house,  in  company  with  a  cow-boy  ;  the  dinner- 
hour  elapsed,  he  was  absent,  and  could  not  be  found ;  when  the 
alarm  of  the  family  became  very  great,  for  they  apprehended 
that  he  might  have  been  carried  off  by  gipsies.  At  length,  after 
search  had  been  made  for  him  in  various  directions,  he  was  dis 
covered  alone,  sitting  composedly  by  the  side  of  a  brook  which 
he  could  not  get  over.  "I  wonder,  child,"  said  the  old  lady 
when  she  saw  him,  "that  hunger  and  fear  did  not  drive  you 
home."  "Fear!  grandmamma,"  replied  the  future  hero;  "I 
never  saw  fear — what  is  it?" 

*  A  defendant  of  Sir  John  Suckling,  the  poet.    One  of  the  family  married  a  descendant 
of  Inigo  Junes. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  241 

Nelson  was  first  sent  to  a  small  school  at  Downham ;  and  in 
the  market-place,  as  often  as  he  could  get  there,  he  might  be 
seen,  working  away,  in  his  little  green  coat,  at  the  pump,  till,  by 
the  help  of  his  school-fellows,  a  sufficient  pond  was  made  for 
floating  the  little  ship  which  he  had  cut  with  a  knife,  and  rigged 
with  a  paper  sail.  An  incident,  showing  Nelson's  compassionate 
disposition,  is  related  of  him  at  this  age.  A  shoemaker  of  Down- 
ham  had  a  pet-lamb,  which  he  kept  in  his  shop ;  and  one  day 
Nelson  accidentally  jammed  the  animal  between  the  door  and  the 
door-post,  when  the  little  fellow's  sorrow  for  the  pain  he  had 
unwittingly  inflicted  was  excessive,  and  for  some  time  uncon 
trollable. 

Horatio  was  next  sent,  with  his  brother  William,  to  a  larger 
school  at  North  Walsham,  where  another  characteristic  incident 
occurred.  There  were  some  fine  pears  growing  in  the  school 
master's  garden,  which  the  boys  regarded  as  lawful  booty,  and 
in  the  highest  degree  tempting ;  but  the  boldest  among  them  was 
afraid  to  venture  for  the  fruit.  Horatio  volunteered  upon  the 
service :  he  was  lowered  down  at  night  from  the  bed-room  win 
dow  by  some  sheets,  he  plundered  the  tree,  and  was  drawn  up 
with  the  pears,  which  he  distributed  among  his  school-fellows, 
without  reserving  any  for  himself — "I  only  took  them,"  he  said, 
"because  every  other  boy  was  afraid." 

Nelson's  mother  died  in  1767,  leaving  eight  out  of  eleven 
children.  Her  brother,  Captain  Maurice  Suckling,  of  the  Navy, 
visited  the.  widow  upon  this  event,  and  promised  to  take  care  of 
one  of  the  boys.  Three  years  afterward,  when  Horatio  was 
only  twelve  years  of  age,  being  at  home  for  the  Christmas  holi 
days,  he  read  in  the  county  newspaper  that  his  uncle  was  appoin 
ted  to  the  RaisonnaUe,  of  64  guns.  "  Do,  William,"  said  he  to 
a  brother  who  was  a  year  and  a  half  older  than  himself,  "write 
to  my  father,  and  tell  him  that  I  should  like  to  go  to  sea  with 
uncle  Maurice."  Mr.  Nelson  was  then  at  Bath :  his  circum 
stances  were  straitened,  and  he  knew  that  it  was  the  wish  of 
providing  for  himself  by  which  Horatio  was  chiefly  actuated; 
he  did  not  oppose  his  resolution  ;  he  understood  the  boy's  char 
acter,  and  had  always  said  that  in  whatever  station  he  might  be 
placed,  he  would  climb,  if  possible,  to  the  very  top  of  the  tree. 
Accordingly,  Captain  Suckling  was  written  to:  "What,"  said 
he,  in  his  answer,  "has  poor  Horatio  done,  who  is  so  weak,  that 
he,  above  all  the  rest,  should  be  sent  to  rough  it  out  at  sea? — 
But  let  him  come,  and  the  first  time  we  go  into  action,  a  cannon- 
ball  may  knock  off  his  head,  and  provide  for  him  at  once." 

The  brothers  returned  to  their  school  at  North  Walsham.  Not 
16 


242  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

long  after,  early  on  a  cold  and  dark  spring  morning,  Mr.  Nelson's 
servant  arrived  with  the  expected  summons  for  Horatio  to  join 
his  ship.  The  parting  from  his  brother  William,  who  had  been 
so  long  his  playmate,  was  a  painful  effort.  He  accompanied  his 
father  to  London.  The  Raisonnable  was  lying  in  the  Medway. 
He  was  put  into  the  Chatham  stage,  and  on  its  arrival  was  set 
down  with  the  rest  of  the  passengers,  and  left  to  find  his  way  on 
board  as  he  could.  After  wandering  about  in  the  cold  without 
being  able  to  reach  the  ship,  an  officer,  observing  the  forlorn 
appearance  of  the  boy,  questioned  him  ;  and  happening  to  be 
acquainted  with  his  uncle,  took  him  home  and  gave  him  some 
refreshment.  When  he  got  on  board,  Captain  Suckling  was  not 
in  the  ship,  nor  had  any  person  been  apprised  of  the  boy's  coming. 
He  paced  the  deck  the  whole  remainder  of  the  day,  without 
being  noticed  by  any  one  ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  second  day  that 
somebody,  as  he  expressed  it,  "took  compassion  on  him."  Mr. 
Southey  feelingly  adds: 

"  The  pain  which  is  felt  when  we  are  first  transplanted  from  our  native  soil,  when  the 
living  branch  is  cut  from  the  parent  tree,  is  one  of  the  nn  st  poignant  griefs  which  we  have 
to  endure  through  life.  There  are  Jafter-grieft.  which  wound  more  deeply,  which  leave 
behind  them  scars  never  to  be  effaced,  which  bruise  the  spirit,  and  sometimes  break  the 
heart  :  but  never  do  we  feel  so  keenly  the  want  of  lovp,  the  necessity  of  being  loved,  and 
the  sense  of  utter  desertion,  as  when  we  first  leave  the  haven  of  home,  and  are,  as  it 
were,  pushed  oiT  upon  the  stream  of  life.  Added  to  these  feeling*,  the  sea-boy  has  to 
endure  physical  hardships,  and  the  privation  of  every  comfort,  even  of  sleep.  Nelson  had 
a  feeble  body  and  an  nffr^ctiotiate  heart,  and  he  remembered  through  life  his  first  days  of 
wretchedness  in  the  service. 

In  Arthur's  Life  of  the  hero,  we  have  Nelson's  own  account 
of  his  birth  and  early  life:  "I  was  born  Sept.  29th,  1758,  in 
the  parsonage-house ;  was  sent  to  the  High-school  at  Norwich, 
and  afterward  removed  to  Northway,  from  whence,  on  the  dis 
turbance  with  Spain  relative  to  the  Falkland  Islands,  I  went  to 
sea  with  my  uncle,  Captain  Maurice  Suckling,  in  the  Raisonnable, 
of  64  guns  ;  but  the  business  with  Spain  being  accommodated,  I 
was  sent  in  a  West  India  ship  belonging  to  the  house  of  Ilibbert 
Furrier  Horton,  with  Mr.  John  Rathbone,  who  had  formerly 
been. in  the  navy,  in  the  Dreadnought,  with  Captain  Suckling. 
From  this  voyage  I  returned  to  the  Triumph,  at  Chatham,  in 
July,  1772  ;  and  if  I  did  not  improve  in  my  education,  I  returned 
a  practical  seaman,  with  a  horror  of  the  Royal  Navy,  and  with 
a  gaying,  then  constant  with  the  seamen — 'Aft  the  most  honor, 
forward  the  better  man.1 " 

Such  was  the  start  in  life  of  one  of  the  greatest  heroes  in  the 
annals  of  British  history,  or  perhaps  in  the  annals  of  the  world, 
whose  great  deeds  are  so  numerous,  splendid,  and  important  as 
to  "confound  the  biographer  with  excess  of  light"  and  whose 
death  was  felt  in  England  as  a  public  calamity;  "yet,"  says 


.  Anecdote  Biographies.  243 

Southey,  "he  cannot  be  said  to  have  fallen  prematurely  whose 
work  was  done,  or  ought  he  to  be  lamented  who  died  so  full  of 
honors,  and  at  the  height  of  human  fame." 

ROBERT  BURNS,  "THE  AYRSHIRE  PLOWMAN." 

Robert  Burns,  whom  his  countrymen  delight  to  honor  as  the 
Shakspeare  of  Scotland,  was  born  in  1759,  in  the  parish  of 
Alloway,  near  Ayr.  His  father  was  a  poor  farmer,  who  gave 
his  son  what  education  he  could  afford.  Burns  tells  us  that 
"though  it  cost  the  schoolmaster  some  thrashings,"  he  made  an 
excellent  English  scholar ;  and  by  the  time  he  was  ten  or  eleven 
years  of  age,  he  was  a  critic  in  substantives,  verbs,  and  particles. 
In  his  infant  and  boyish  days,  too,  he  was  much  with  an  old 
woman  who  resided  in  the  family,  and  was  remarkable  for  her 
ignorance,  credulity,  and  superstition.  She  had  the  largest  col 
lection  in  the  country  of  tales  and  songs  concerning  demons, 
ghosts,  fairies,  brownies,  witches,  kelpies,  elf-candles,  dead-lights, 
wraiths,  apparitions,  cantraips,  giants,  enchanted  towers,  dragons, 
and  other  trumpery.  This  cultivated  the  latent  seeds  of  poetry, 
but  had  so  strong  an  effect  on  Burns's  imagination,  that  after  he 
had  grown  to  manhood,  in  his  nocturnal  rambles  he  sometimes 
kept  a  sharp  look-out  in  suspicious  places,  and  it  often  took  an 
effort  of  philosophy  to  shake  off  these  idle  terrors.*  He  says : 
"The  earliest  composition  that  I  recollect  taking  pleasure  in, 
was  The  Vision  of  Mirza,  and  a  hymn  of  Addison's,  beginning, 
*  How  are  thy  servants  blest,  O  Lord !'  I  particularly  remem 
ber  one  stanza,  which  was  music  to  my  boyish  ear: 

c  For  though  on  dreadful  whirls  we  hung 
High  on  the  broken  wave.' 

I  met  with  these  pieces  in  Mason's  English  Collection,  one  of  my 
school-books.  The  two  first  books  I  ever  read  in  private,  and 
which  gave  me  more  pleasure  than  any  two  books  I  ever  read 
since,  were  The  Life  of  Hannibal,  and  The  History  of  Sir 
William  Wallace.  Hannibal  gave  my  young  ideas  such  a  turn, 
that  I  used  to  strut  in  rapture  up  and  down  after  the  recruiting 
drum  and  bagpipe,  and  wish  myself  tall  enough  to  be  a  soldier ; 
while  the  story  of  Wallace  poured  a  Scottish  prejudice  into  my 
veins,  which  will  boil  along  there  till  the  flood-gates  of  life  shut 
in  eternal  rest." 

While  Burns  lived  on  his  father's  little  farm,  he  tells  us  that  he 
was,  perhaps,  the  most  ungainly,  awkward  boy  in  the  parish. 
He  continues: 

*See  the  Life  and  Works  of  Robert  Burns.     Library  Edition.    Edited  by  Robert 
Chambers. 


244  8chool-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

"  What  I  knew  of  ancient  story  was  gathered  from  Salmon 'H  and  Guthrie'a  Gengraphical 
Grammar*;  and  the  ideas  I  formed  of  modern  manner?,  literature,  ami  rri'iri.-m,  1  got 
from  tho  Sprttntor.  Thece,  with  Pope's  W,  rks,  some  Plays  of  Shakppeare,  Tull  and  Dick- 
Don  on  Agrir.ulturr,  the  I'anthron.  I/ocke  On  the  Human  Understanding,  Stackhouse'a 
History  of  tlif  Rib  r,  Justice's  Brituk  (iartltnfr's  Dirertnry,  llayle's  Lfeturn,  Allan  Ham- 
nay's  Works,  Taylor's  Scripture  Doct-ine  of  Original  6V»i,  A  Select  Collection  >f  EngHfk 
Song*,  *n*l  llervcy's  Meditation.*,  had  formed  the  whole  of  my  reading.  The  Collection 
of  Songs  was  my  vade-mecum.  I  pored  over  them  driving  my  carf,  or  walking  to  labor, 
pong  by  song,  verse  by  vere«  — carefully  noting  the  true,  tender,  and  sublime,  from  affecta 
tion  and  fustian.  I  am  convinced  I  owe  to  this  practice  much  of  my  critic  craft,  such  as 
it  Is." 

Burns's  father  was  a  man  of  uncommon  intelligence  for  his 
station  in  life,  and  was  anxious  that  his  children  should  have  tho 
best  education  which  their  circumstances  admitted  of.  Robert 
was,  therefore,  sent  in  his  sixth  year  to  a  little  school  at  Alloway 
Mill,  about  a  mile  from  their  cottage :  not  long  after,  his  father 
took  a  lead  in  establishing  a  young  teacher,  named  John  Mur 
doch,  in  a  humble  temple  of  learning,  nearer  hand,  and  there 
Robert  and  his  younger  brother,  Gilbert,  attended  for  some  time. 
"  With  him,"  says  Gilbert,  "  we  learned  to  read  English  tolerably 
well,  and  to  write  a  little.  He  taught  us,  too,  the  English 
Grammar.  I  was  too  young  to  profit  much  from  his  lessons  in 
grammar,  but  Robert  made  some  proficiency  in  it ;  a  circum 
stance  of  considerable  weight  in  the  unfolding  of  his  genius  and 
character,  as  he  soon  became  remarkable  for  the  fluency  and  cor 
rectness  of  his  expression,  and  read  the  few  books  that  came  in 
his  way  with  much  pleasure  and  improvement ;  for  even  then 
he  was  a  reader  when  he  could  get  a  book."  Gilbert  next  men 
tions  that  The  Life  of  Wallace,  which  Robert  Burns  refers  to, 
"he  borrowed  from  the  blacksmith  who  shod  our  horses." 

The  poet  was  about  seven  years  of  age  when  (17GG)  his  father 
left  the  clay  bigging  at  Alloway,  and  settled  in  the  small  upland 
farm  at  Mount  Oliphant,  about  two  miles  distant.  He  and  his 
younger  brother  continued  to  attend  Mr.  Murdoch's  school  for 
two  years  longer,  when  it  was  broken  up.  Murdoch  took  his 
leave  of  the  boys,  and  brought,  as  a  present  and  memorial,  a 
small  compendium  of  English  Grammar,  and  the  tragedy  of  Titus 
Andronicus;  he  began  to  road  the  play  aloud,  but  so  shocked 
was  the  party  at  some  of  its  incidents,  that  Robert  declared  if 
the  play  were  left, he  would  burn  it;  and  Murdoch  left  the  com 
edy  of  the  School  for  Love  in  its  place. 

The  father  now  instructed  his  two  sons,  and  other  children  : 
there  were  no  boys  of  their  own  age  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
their  father  was  almost  their  only  companion  :  he  conversed  with 
them  as  though  they  were  men ;  he  taught  them  from  Salmon's 
Geographical  Grammar  the  situation  and  history  of  the  different 
countries  of  the  world ;  and  from  a  book-society  in  Ayr  he  pro 
cured  Durham's  Physico  and  Astro  Theology,  and  Ray's  Wisdom 


Anecdote  Biographies.  245 

of  God  in  the  Creation,  to  give  his  sons  some  idea  of  astronomy 
and  natural  history.  Robert  read  all  these  books  with  an  avidity 
and  industry  scarcely  to  be  equaled.  From  Stackhouse's  His 
tory  of  the  Bible,  then  lately  published  in  Kilmarnock,  Robert 
collected  a  competent  knowledge  of  ancient  history  ;  "for,"  says 
his  brother,  "no  book  was  so  voluminous  as  to  slacken  his  indus 
try,  or  so  antiquated  as  to  damp  his  researches."  About  this 
time  a  relative  inquired  at  a  bookseller's  shop  in  Ayr  for  a  book 
to  teach  Robert  to  write  letters,  when,  instead  of  the  Complete 
Letter  Writer,  he  got  by  mistake  a  small  collection  of  letters  by 
the  most  eminent  writers,  with  a  few  sensible  directions  for  attain 
ing  an  easy  epistolary  style,  which  book  proved  to  Burns  of  the 
greatest  consequence. 

Burns  was  about  thirteen  or  fourteen,  when,  his  father  regret 
ting  that  he  and  his  brother  wrote  so  ill,  to  remedy  this  defect 
sent  them  to  the  parish  school  of  Dalrymple,  between  two  and 
three  miles  distant,  the  nearest  to  them.  Murdoch,  the  boys' 
former  master,  now  settled  in  Ayr,  as  a  teacher  of  the  English 
language :  he  sent  them  Pope's  Work?,  and  some  other  poetry, 
the  first  they  had  an  opportunity  of  reading,  except  that  in  the 
English  Collection,  and  in  the  Edinburgh  Magazine  for  1772. 
Robert  was  now  sent  to  Ayr,  "to  revise  his  English  gram 
mar  with  his  former  teacher,"  but  he  was  shortly  obliged  to 
return  to  assist  in  the  harvest.  He  then  learned  surveying  at 
the  parish  school  of  Kirkoswald.  He  had  learned  French  of 
Murdoch,  and  could  soon  read  and  understand  any  French 
author  in  prose.  He  then  attempted  to  learn  Latin,  but  soon 
gave  it.  up.  Mrs.  Paterson,  of  Ayr,  now  lent  the  boys  the 
Spectator,  Pope's  Translation  of  Homer,  and  several  other  books 
that  were  of  use  to  them. 

Thus,  although  Robert  Burns  was  the  child  of  poverty  and 
toil,  there  were  fortunate  circumstances  in  his  position :  his  par 
ents  were  excellent  persons  ;  his  father  exerted  himself  as  his 
instructor,  and,  cottager  as  he  was,  contrived  to  have  something 
like  the  benefits  of  private  tuition  for  his  two  eldest  sons ;  and 
the  young  poet  became,  comparatively  speaking,  a  well-educated 
man.  His  father  had  remarked,  from  a  very  early  period,  the 
bright  intellect  of  his  elder-born  in  particular,  saying  to  his  wife, 
"Whoever  may  live  to  see  it,  something  extraordinary  will  come 
from  that  boy !" 

It  was  not  until  his  twenty-third  year  that  Burns's  reading  was 
enlarged  by  the  addition  of  Thomson,  Shenstone,  Sterne"  and 
Mackenzie.  Other  standard  works  soon  followed.  The  great 
advantage  of  his  learning  was,  that  what  books  he  had,  he  read 
and  studied  thoroughly — his  attention  was  not  distracted  by  a 


246  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

multitude  of  volumes,  and  his  mind  grew  up  with  original  and 
robust  vigor;  and  in  the  veriest  shades  of  obscurity,  he  toiled, 
when  a  mere  youth,  to  support  his  virtuous  parents  and  their 
household ;  yet  all  this  time  he  grasped  at  every  opportunity  of 
acquiring  knowledge  from  men  and  books. 

Burns,  says  Mr.  Carruthers,  came  as  a  potent  auxiliary  or 
fellow-worker  with  Cowper,  in  bringing  poetry  into  the  channels 
of  truth  and  nature.  There  were  only  two  years  between  the 
Task,  and  the  Cotters  Saturday  Night.  No  poetry  was  ever 
more  instantaneously  or  universally  popular  among  a  people 
than  that  of  Burns  in  Scotland.  There  was  the  humor  of 
Smollett,  the  pathos  and  tenderness  of  Sterne  or  Richardson,  the 
real  life  of  Fielding,  and  the  description  of  Thomson — all 
united  in  the  delineations  of  Scottish  manners  and  scenery  by 
the  Ayrshire  plowman.  His  master-piece  is  Tarn  o'Shanter :  it 
was  so  considered  by  himself,  and  the  judgment  has  been 
confirmed  by  Campbell,  Wilson,  Montgomery,  and  by  almost 
every  critic. 

RICHARD    PORSOX,    "THE    NORFOLK   BOY,"    AT    IIAPPESBURGH, 
ETON,    AND    CAMBRIDGE. 

Richard  Porson  was  born  in  1759,  at  East  Ruston,  near  North 
Walsham,  Norfolk :  he  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  parish-clerk  of 
the  place,  who  was  a  worsted-weaver,  and  is  described  as  clever 
in  his  way.  Person's  mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  shoemaker : 
she  was  shrewd  and  lively,  and  had  considerable  literary  taste, 
being  familiar  with  Shakspeare  and  other  standard  English 
authors,  from  her  access  to  a  library  in  a  gentleman's  house 
where  she  lived  servant. 

Porson,  when  a  boy,  was  put  to  the  loom  at  once,  and  prob 
ably  helped  his  mother  in  the  corn-fields  in  harvest-time.  He 
was  next  sent  to  the  neighboring  school  of  Happesburgh,  the 
master  of  which  was  a  good  Latin  scholar.  When  the  father 
took  his  son  to  school,  he  said  to  the  master :  "  I  have  brought 
my  boy  Richard  to  you,  and  just  want  him  to  make  (sic)  his  own 
name,  and  then  I  shall  take  him  into  the  loom."  The  master, 
however,  took  great  pains  with  the  boy,  making  him  at  night 
repeat  the  lessons  he  had  learnt  during  the  day,  aud  thus,  prob 
ably,  laid  the  foundation  of  Person's  unrivaled  memory.  He 
had  previously  been  for  a  short  time  at  a  school  at  Bacton,  but 
was  unable  to  bear  the  rough  treatment  of  the  boys.  At  Hap 
pesburgh,  he  learnt  rapidly — especially  arithmetic,  of  which  he 
continued  all  his  life  very  fond ;  and  his  penmanship  was  very 
skillful.  His  memory  was  wonderful :  he  would  repeat  a  lesson 
which  he  hud  learnt  one  or  two  years  before,  and  had  never  seen 


Anecdote  Biographies.  247 

in  the  interim.  He  had  only  such  books  as  his  father's  cottage 
supplied — a  volume  or  two  of  Arithmetic,  Greenwood's  England, 
Jewell's  Apology ;  an  odd  volume  of  Chambers's  Cyclop&dia, 
picked  up  from  a  wrecked  coaster;  and  eight  or  ten  volumes  of 
the  Universal  Magazine. 

The  remarkable  aptitude  of  Person  soon  became  noticed:  at 
the  age  of  eleven,  Mr.  Hewitt,  the  curate  of  East  Ruston,  took 
charge  of  his  education,  and  continued  to  instruct  him  till  the 
age  of  thirteen,  when  his  fame  as  a  youthful  prodigy,  through 
Mr.  Hewitt,  became  known  to  Mr.  Norris,  the  founder  of  the 
Norrisian  Professorship  at  Cambridge,  who  said,  however: 
"Well,  I  see  nothing  particular  in  this  heavy-looking  boy,  but 
I  confide  in  your  account  of  his  talents."  Person  was  then 
sent  to  Cambridge,  where  the  Greek  Professor,  and  three  tutors 
of  Trinity  College,  having  examined  him,  reported  of  him  so 
favorably  that  Mr.  Norris  had  him  entered  on  the  foundation  at 
Eton,  in  1774. 

Hr.  Hewitt,  writing  to  the  Cambridge  Professor,  speaks  of 
having  had  "  the  orderly  and  good  boy  under  his  care  for  almost 
two  years,  chiefly  on  Corderius's  Colloquies,  Caisar,  Ovid,  Horace, 
and  Virgil,  and  Mathematics.  In  Greek  he  was  only  learning 
the  verbs."  * 

Of  his  Eton  days,  Porson  only  recollected  with  pleasure  the 
rat-hunts  in  the  Long  Chamber.  His  promise  of  excellence 
appears  at  this  time  to  have  rather  diminished :  his  composition 
was  weak,  and  his  ignorance  of  quantity  kept  him  behind  his  in 
feriors  in  other  respects.  He  was  also  prone  to  conceit  in  his 
verses,  and  fond  of  mixing  Greek  with  his  Latin.  He  went  too 
late  to  Eton  to  have  any  chance  of  succeeding  to  a  scholarship 
at  King's.  He  was  popular  among  his  school-fellows,  and  two 
dramas  which  he  wrote  for  performance  in  the  Long  Chamber 
are  still  remembered.  He  seems,  however,  at  first  to  have  some 
what  disappointed  his  friends,  as  Lord  Nelson's  brother,  who 
was  at  Eton  with  Porson,  brought  back  word  that  they  thought 
nothing  of  the  Norfolk  boy.  At  the  same  time,  his  unrivaled 
memory  was  noticed  at  school,  and  exemplified  in  the  oft-repeat 
ed  story  of  his  construing  Horace  from  memory,  when  his  book 
had  been  abstracted,  and  Ovid  put  in  its  place.  And  his  promise 
must  have  been  remarkable,  as  when  he  left  Eton,  contributions 
from  Etonians  to  aid  the  funds  for  his  maintenance  at  the  Uni 
versity  were  readily  subscribed. 

At  Eton  he  remained  some  four  years,  and  in  October,  1778, 

*  These  leading  details  of  Person's  life  and  career  of  learning  have  been  selected  and 
condensed  from  a  very  able  paper  by  II.  R.  Luard,  M.A.,  in  the  Cambridge  Essays,  con 
tributed  by  Members  of  the  University.  1857. 


248  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

through  the  aid  of  Sir  George  Baker,  the  celebrated  physician 
(Mr.  Norris  had  died  in  the  previous  year),  Person  became  a 
member  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge ;  was  elected  Scholar  in 
1780,  and  Craven  University  Scholar  in  1781.  Next  year  he 
graduated  as  third  senior  optiine,  and  obtained  soon  after  the 
fir>t  Chancellor's  medal ;  and  in  the  same  year  he  was  elected 
Fellow  of  Trinity,  a  very  unusual  thing  at  that  time  for  a  Junior 
Bachelor  of  Arts.  He  seems  to  have  begun  his  critical  career 
while  an  undergraduate,  and  it  was,  doubtless,  during  his  resi 
dence  at  Cambridge  that  he  laid  up  his  marvelous  stores  of 
learning  for  future  use.  He  now  turned  his  thoughts  to  pub 
lication  ;  and  is  said  to  have  first  appeared  in  print  in  a  short 
critique  on  Schut/'s  ^Eschylns,  in  a  review  started  by  his  friend 
Maty,  a  Fellow  of  Trinity,  in  1783  ;  and  he  contributed  to  this 
journal  some  four  years,  until  it  was  discontinued.  "  His  review 
of  Brunek's  Aristophanes  is  a  striking  specimen  of  that  strong 
nervous  English  for  which  all  Porson's  writings  are  remarkable, 
and  nowhere  else  are  the  chief  excellencies  and  defects  of  the 
great  comic  poet  so  well  summed  up."  But  at  this  period,  his 
chief  attention  was  devoted  to  ^Eschyku :  his  restoration  of  two 
passages  in  Plutarch  and  JEschylus,  by  each  other's  help,  is  one 
of  the  earliest  as  well  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of  all  Porson's 
emendations.  "  If  it  be  remembered  that  this  was  done  by  a 
young  man  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  it  shows  an  amount  of 
learning,  mingled  with  the  power  of  applying  it,  at  that  age,  that 
it  would  be  vain  to  seek  elsewhere."  (H.  R.  Luard.') 

In  1786,  Person  communicated  to  a  new  edition  of  Hutchin- 
fion's  Anabasis  of  Xcnophon  a  few  annotations  which  give  the 
first  specimen  of  that  neat  and  terse  style  of  Latin  notes  in  which 
Porson  was  afterward  to  appear  without  a  rival.  They  also 
show  already  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  his  two  favorite 
authors,  Plato  and  Athenxus,  and  a  familiarity  with  Eustathius's 
Commentary  on  Homer.  Next  year  were  written  his  Nota 
breves  prefixed  to  the  Oxford  reprint  of  Toup,  which  first  made 
his  name  known,  generally,  as  a  critic  of  the  highest  rank.  In 
the  same  year  appeared  the  most  perfect  specimen  of  Porson's 
wonderful  power  of  humor — the  three  panegyrical  letters  in  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  on  Hawkins's  Life  of  Johnson,  in  which 
wonderful  compositions  Porson's  force  of  pleasantry  and  delicate 
touches  of  satire  show  his  extensive  acquaintance  with  the  Eng 
lish  dramatists,  especially  with  Shakspeare.  The  whole  is  an 
admirable  specimen  of  Porson's  peculiar  ironical  humor. 

Person  became  better  known  by  his  series  of  Letters  to  Arch 
deacon  Travis,  on  the  contested  verse,  1  John  v.  7 — in  the  words 
of  Gibbon,  "  the  most  acute  and  accurate  piece  of  criticism  which 


Anecdote  Biographies.  249 

had  appeared  since  the  days  of  Bentley."  Person  also  gained 
great  celebrity  in  the  learned  world  by  his  discovery  of  the  new 
canons  respecting  the  Iambic  metre  of  the  Greek  tragedians, 
which  he  announced  in  the  preface  to  his  second  edition  of  the 
Hecuba  of  Euripides. 

We  have  not  space  to  glance  further  at  Person's  masterly 
criticisms,  or  his  classical  contributions  to  periodical  literature. 
He  resigned  his  Fellowship  through  his  religious  opinions,  and 
was  subsequently  supported  by  subscription.  He  was  after 
ward  elected  to  the  Regius  Professorship  of  Greek  at  Cam 
bridge. 

Meanwhile,  he  lived  in  Chambers  in  Essex-court,  Temple; 
and  occasionally  visited  Dr.  Goodall,  at  Eton  ;  and  Dr.  Parr. 
While  at  Hatton,  he  generally  spent  his  mornings  in  the  library, 
and  in  the  evening  would  pour  fourth  from  the  rich  stores  of 
his  memory  pages  of  Barrow,  whole  letters  of  Richardson, 
whole  scenes  of  Foote,  recitations  from  Shakspeare,  and  ety 
mologies  and  dissertations  on  the  .roots  of  the  English  lan 
guage.  His  wonderful  power  of  retaining  accurately  what  he 
had  read,  and  being  able  to  produce  it  always  when  called  for, 
never  forsook  him.  Nothing  carne  amiss  to  his  memory:  he 
would  set  a  child  right  in  his  twopenny  fhble-'book,  repeat  the 
whole  of  the  moral  tale  of  the  Dean  of  Badajos,  or  a  page 
of  Athenceus  on  cups,  or  Eustathius  on  Homer.  Sometimes  he 
would  recite  forgotten  Vauxhall  songs,  and  spend  hours  in 
making  charades  or  conundrums  for  ladies,  with  whom  he  was  a 
great  favorite. 

It  has  been  observed  of  Person  by  one  who  saw  much  of  him, 
that  to  the  manners  of  a  gentleman,  and  the  most  gigantic  powers 
of  learning  and  criticism,  he  joined  the  inoffensiveness  of  a  child ; 
and,  among  his  many  good  qualities,  one  was,  never  to  speak  ill 
of  the  moral  character  of  any  man. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  trace  in  Person's  habits  of  thought  the  in 
fluence  which  the  study  of  mathematics  had  upon  him.  He  was 
to  his  dying  day  very  fond  of  these  studies.  There  are  still  pre 
served  many  papers  of  his  scribbled  over  with  mathematical 
calculations;  and  when  the  fit  seized  him  in  the  street  which 
caused  his  death,  an  equation  was  found  in  his  pocket. 

Dr.  Young  has  said  of  him,  that  "as  far  as  regards  the  pos 
session  of  a  combination  of  the  faculties  which  Porson  did  culti 
vate,  he  appears  to  have  been  decidedly  the  most  successful  of 
any  man  on  record  in  the  same  department." 

"To  him  chiefly,"  says  Mr.  Luard,  in  his  excellent  paper  in 
the  Cambridge  Essays,  "English  scholarship  (especially  Cam 
bridge  scholarship)  owes  its  accuracy  and  its  certainty:  and  this 


250  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

as  a  branch  of  education  —  as  a  substratum  on  which  to  rest 
other  brandies  of  knowledge  often  infinitely  more  useful  in  them 
selves — really  takes  as  high  a  rank  as  any  of  those  studies  which 
can  contribute  to  form  the  character  of  a  well-educated  English 
gentleman." 

How  painful  is  it  to  add,  that  a  man  of  such  amiable  nature 
and  surpassing  intellect  should  have  been  addicted  for  many 
years  of  his  life  to  the  degrading  habit  of  hard-drinking. 

THE  MARQUIS  WELLESLEY  AL  ETON  AND  OXFORD. 

In  the  foremost  rank  of  high  scholarship  at  Eton  i.s  Richard 
Marquis  "Wellesley,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Earl  of  Mornington, 
"a  person  of  talents  and  virtue,  and  his  taste  in  music  being  cul 
tivated  in  an  extraordinary  degree,  he  was  the  author  of  some 
beautiful  compositions,  which  still  retain  their  place  in  the  favor 
of  the  musical  world."  Richard  was  born  at  Dangan  Castle,  in 
the  county  of  Meath,  in  17  GO:  his  mother,  a  daughter  of  Lord 
Dungannon,  lived  to  an  extreme  old  age:  "she  saw  all  the 
glories  of  Ilindostan,  of  Spain,  and  of  Waterloo ;  and  left  four 
sons  sitting  in  the  House  of  Lords,  not  by  inheritance,  but  by 
merit  raised  to  that  proud  eminence."  * 

Richard,  who,  at  his  father's  death,  had  nearly  attained 
majority,  was  sent  first  to  Harrow,  and  there  took  part  in  a  great 
rebellion  that  had  well  nigh  broken  up  the  school.  This  occa 
sioned  his  expulsion,  and  he  then,  in  his  llth  year,  went  to 
Eton,  where,  says  his  biographer,  Lord  Brougham,  "  he  was  dis 
tinguished  above  all  the  youths  of  his  time." 

When  Dr  Goodall,  his  cotemporary,  and  afterward  Head-Master,  was  examined  in  1818, 
before  the  Education  Committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  respecting  the  alleged  passing 
over  of  Porson  in  giving  promotion  to  King's  College,  he  at  once,  declared  that  the  cele 
brated  Grecian  was  not  by  any  means  at  the  head  of  the  Etonians  of  hi*  day  ;  and  being 
a-sked  by  me  (as  chairman)  to  name  his  superior,  he  at  once  said,  Lord  Wellesley. — Lires 
of  Statesmen,  by  Lord  Brougham,  who  adds  in  a  note,  "  Some  of  the  Committee  would 
have  had  this  struck  out  of  the  evidence,  as  not  bearing  upon  the  subject  of  the  inquiry, 
the  Abuse  of  Charities  ;  but  the  general  voice  was  immediately  pronounced  in  favor  of  re 
taining  it,  as  a  small  tribute  of  our  great  respect  for  Lord  \Vellcsley  ;  and  1  know  that  he 
highly  valued  this  tribute." 

Dr.  Davis  was  Lord  Wellesley's  tutor  when  he  entered  Eton 
School ;  and,  in  after-life,  the  Marquis  described  the  Doctor  to 
have  always  bestowed  on  his  education  the  solicitude  and  affection 
of  a  kind  parent.  The  pupil  greatly  excelled  in  classical  studies : 
some  of  his  verses  in  the  Musce  Etonenses  have  great  merit,  as 
examples  both  of  pure  Latinity  and  poetical  talent :  the  Lines 
on  Bedlam,  especially,  are  of  distinguished  excellence.  Some 
of  his  Latin  poems  were  published  about  this  early  period. 

*  The  Marquis  Wellesley,  Lord  Maryborough,  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  Lord 
Cowloy. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  251 

On  leaving  Eton,  Lord  Wellesley  went  to  Christchurch,  Ox 
ford,  and  here,  under  Dr.  "VV.  Jackson,  afterward  Bishop  of 
Oxford,  he  continued  his  classical  studies.  His  poem  on  the 
Death  of  Captain  Cook  showed  how  entirely  he  had  kept  up 
his  school  reputation :  it  justly  gained  the  University  prize. 
At  college  he  formed  with  Lord  Grenville  a  friendship  which 
continued  during  their  lives,  and  led  to  his  intimacy  with  Lord 
Grenville's  great  kinsman,  Mr.  Pitt,  upon  their  entering  into 
public  life.*  Yet  the  young  minister  never  deemed  it  worth 
while  to  promote  Lord  Wellesley,  whose  powers  as  a  speaker 
were  of  a  high  order,  and  with  whom  Mr.  Pitt  lived  on  the 
most  intimate  footing.  The  trifling  place  of  a  junior  Lord  of  the 
Treasury,  and  a  member  of  the  India  Board,  formed  all  the  pre 
ferment  which  he  received  before  his  appointment  as  Governor- 
General  of  India,  although  that  important  nomination  sufficiently 
shows  the  high  estimate  which  Mr.  Pitt  had  formed  of  his 
capacity.  In  1781,  before  taking  his  degree,  Lord  Wellesley 
was  called  away  to  Ireland  in  consequence  of  the  death  of  his 
father :  subsequently  he  attended  to  the  education  of  his  younger 
brothers.  Lord  Wellesley  (says  Pearce,  his  biographer)  "was 
deeply  attached  throughout  his  long  life  to  Eton.  Some  of  the 
latest  productions  of  his  lordship's  pen  were  dedicated  to  his 
beloved  Eton  ;  and  in  testimony  of  the  strong  affection  which  he 
entertained  toward  the  place  where  he  received  his  first  impres 
sions  of  literary  taste,  and  in  accordance  \vith  his  desire  ex 
pressed  before  his  death,  his  body  was  deposited  in  a  vault  of 
Eton  Chapel." 

In  his  riper  years,  Lord  Wellesley  retained  the  same  classical  taste  which  had  been  ere 
ated  at  school  and  nurtured  at  college.  As  late  as  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  he  amused 
himself  with  Latin  verses,  was  constant  in  reading  the  Greek  orators  and  poets,  and  cor 
responded  with  the  Bishop  of  Durham  upon  a  favorite  project  which  he  had  formed  of  learn  - 

*  When  Mr.  Pitt  was  a  youth,  some  law-lord  (could  it  be  Lord  Mansfield?)  one  morning 
paid  a  visit  to  Lord  Chatham  at  his  country  residence.  Whilst  they  were  conversing,  his 

son  William  came  through  the  library.  Lord asked  who  is  that  youth?  Lord 

Chatham  said,  "  That  is  my  second  son — call  him  back  and  talk  to  him.  They  did  so.  and 
Lord was  struck  by  a  forwardness  of  knowledge,  a  readiness  of  expression,  and  un 
yieldingness  of  opinion,  which  even  then  was  remarkable  in  the  future  minister.  When 
he  had  left  them,  Lord  Chatham  said  :  "  That  is  the  most  extraordinary  youth  I  ever 
knew.  All  my  life  I  have  been  aiming  at  the  possession  of  political  power,  and  have 
found  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  or  keeping  it.  It  is  not  on  the  cards  of  fortune  to 
prevent  that  young  man's  gaining  it,  and  if  ever  he  does  so,  he  will  be  the  ruin  of  hia 
country." — Blackwood-s  Edinburgh,  Magazinf,  1825. 

Pitt  was  born  in  1759.  Lord  Brougham  gracefully  says  of  Pitt :  "  At  an  age  when 
others  are  but  entering  on  the  study  of  state  affairs  and  th«  practice  of  debating,  he  came 
forth  a  mature  politician,  a  finished  orator,  even,  as  if  by  inspiration,  an  accomplished  de 
bater.  His  knowledge,  too,  was  not  confined  to  the  study  of  the  classics,  though  with 
these  he  was  familiarly  conversant ;  the  more  severe  pursuits  of  Cambridge  had  imparted 
to  him  some  acquaintance  with  the  stricter  sciences  which  have  had  their  home  upon  the 
banks  of  the  Granta  since  Newton  made  them  his  abode  ;  and  with  political  philosophy  he 
was  more  familiar  than  most  Englishmen  of  his  own  age."  In  honor  of  this  great  States 
man  there  was  founded,  in  1813,  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  a  Classical  "  Jf  itt  Scholar 
ship. :) 


252  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

ing  Hebrew.  FO  that  he  might  be  able  to  relish  the  beauties  of  the  Sacred  Writings,  par 
ticularly  the  Psalmody,  an  object  of  much  admiration  with  him.  His  exquisite  lines  on 
the  "  Hnb\loiii;ii]  \\illow.*  transplanted  from  the  Kuphratea  a  hundred  )  ears  ago,1'  were 
•uggented  by  the  delight  he  took  in  the  137th  Pcalm,  the  most  affecting  »nd  beautiful  of 
the  inspired  King's  whole  poetry.  This  fine  piece  was  the  production  of  his  eighteenth 
year. — Lord  Brougham. 

LORD-CHIEF-JUSTICE  TENTERDEN  AT  CANTERBURY  AND 
OXFORD. 

The  vicissitudes  of  life,  and  the  contrast  presented  by  great 
elevation  from  a  very  humble  origin,  arc  strikingly  exemplified 
in  the  history  of  this  able  and  impartial  judge. 

Charles  Abbott,  Baron  Tenterden,  was  born  in  1762,  at  Can 
terbury,  \vhei  e  his  father  was  a  hair-dresser,  "a  very  decent, 
well-behaved  man,  much  respected  in  his  neighborhood,"  who 
did  his  best,  with  decent  humility,  to  obtain  for  his  son  a  good 
education.  Young  Abbott  was  sent  to  the  King's  School  in 
Canterbury  Cathedral,  of  which  he  became  the  captain,  and 
where  he  so  distinguished  himself  that  the  trustees  of  the  school 
came  to  a  special  vote  to  send  him  as  an  exhibitioner  to  the  Uni 
versity  of  Oxford.  This  assistance  he  afterward  repaid  from 
his  private  purse,  by  opening  it  to  the  same  trustees  in  a  similar 
exigency.  While  he  was  at  Canterbury  school,  his  master,  Dr. 
Osmond  Beauvoir,  it  is  said,  proud  of  his  proficiency,  showed 
his  verses  to  the  clergy  of  the  neighborhood,  boasting  that  "the 
gon  of  the  Canterbury  barber  was  qualified  to  carry  off  a  clas 
sical  prize  from  any  aristocratic  versifier  at  Westminster,  Win 
chester,  or  Eton." 

He  obtained  remarkable  honors  at  Oxford.  The  Class  List 
was  not  established  till  the  commencement  of  this  century,  and 
young  Abbott  took  his  bachelor's  degree  in  1785:  consequently, 
there  being  yet  no  tripos,  he  was  obliged  to  content  himself  with 
all  the  honors  which  were  open  to  him.  He  had  gained  a 
scholarship  at  Corpus  after  he  had  been  a  week  in  Oxford,  and 
he  gained  in  1784  the  Latin  prize  poem,  subject,  "  Globus 
aero&taticus ;"  and  in  1786,  the  English  prize  essay,  subject, 
The  Use  and  Abuse  of  Satire — so  that,  as  the  Latin  essay 
and  English  poem  were  yet  unknown,  he  gained  all  he  could 
gain. 

Abbott  lost  his  father  while  at  the  University ;  his  mother 
then  became  in  a  measure  dependent  on  his  assistance,  and  he 
was  obliged,  in  consequence,  to  decline  an  advantageous  offer 
to  go  as  tutor  to  a  rich  gentleman  of  Virginia;  his  small  means 
were  straitened  by  the  performance  of  his  filial  duties ;  he  was 
obliged  to  dress  plainly,  to  forego  the  enjoyment  of  society, 

*  Sallx  Babylonica. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  253 

and  to  sustain  himself  hardly,  yet  becomingly,  on  his  limited 
resources. 

The  first  practical  result  of  young  Abbott's  efforts  was  his 
election  as  Fellow,  and  his  appointment  as  junior  tutor  of  his 
college.  He  was  already  destined  for  the  church,  when  he  was 
invited  to  become  tutor  to  the  son  of  Mr.  Justice  Buller.  This 
connection  introduced  him  to  the  judge,  who  soon  discovered  his 
intellectual  powers  and  peculiar  fitness  for  law,  and  recommended 
him  to  attempt  it.  The  advice  was  taken ;  and  we  have  the 
authority  of  Lord  Campbell  for  adding  that  Abbot  became  the 
very  best  lawyer  of  his  generation  in  England,  as  he  had 
already  become  the  finest  classical  scholar.  Lord  Campbell 
adds: 

"The  scrubby  little  boy  who  ran  after  his  father,  carrying  for 
him  a  pewter  basin,  a  .case  of  razors,  and  a  hair-powder  bag, 
through  the  streets  of  Canterbury,  became  Chief  Justice  of 
England,  was  installed  among  the  peers  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
attended  by  the  whole  profession  of  the  law,  proud  of  him  as 
their  leader:  and  when  the  names  of  orators  arid  statesmen 
illustrious  in  their  day  have  perished  with  their  frothy  declama 
tions,  Lord  Tenterden  will  be  respected  as  a  great  magistrate, 
and  his  judgments  will  be  studied  and  admired."  * 

Lord  Tenterden  died  in  1832,  and  was  buried  in  the  chapel  of 
the  Foundling  Hospital,  of  which  he  was  Vice-President.|  At 
the  extreme  entrance  to  the  chapel  is  a  marble  bust  of  his  Lord 
ship,  and  beneath  it  a  Latin  inscription,  which,  after  describing 
his  humble  origin,  and  judicial  eminence,  concludes  with  these 
emphatic  words :  "Learn,  Reader,  how  much  in  this  country 
may,  under  the  blessing  of  God,  be  attained  by  honest 
industry." 

HOW   KOBERT    BLOOMFIELD    WROTE    HIS    "FARMER'S    BOY"    IN 
THE    HEART    OF    LONDON. 

This  true  poet  of  nature  was  born  in  17GG,  at  a  small  village 
in  Suffolk :  his  father  died  in  the  same  year,  leaving  his  widow 
five  other  children  besides  Robert.  To  obtain  a  maintenance, 
she  opened  a  school,  and  taught  her  own  children  the  elements 
of  reading  along  with  those  of  her  neighbors.  Besides  this 
education,  Bloomfield  was  taught  to  write  for  two  or  three 
months  at  a  school  in  the  town  of  Ixworth.  At  the  age  of  eleven 
he  went  to  work  upon  his  uncle's  farm,  receiving  only  his  board 
for  his  labor.  In  his  fifteenth  year  he  removed  to  London,  to 

*  Lives  of  the  Lord  Chief- Justices. 

t  Some  verses  written  by  his  lordship  to  be  set  to  music,  are  annually  sung  at  the  com 
memorative  festivals  of  the  Governors  of  the  Hospital. 


254  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

join  his  two  brothers  in  making  shoes,  in  a  garret  in  Bell-alley, 
Coleman-street.  At  this  time  he  read  about  as  many  hours 
every  week  as  boys  generally  spend  in  play.  He  next  wrote  a 
few  verses,  which  were  printed  in  the  London  Magazine ;  and 
he  was  observed  to  read  with  much  avidity  a  copy  of  Thomson's 
Seasons,  which  first  inspired  Bloomfield  with  the  thought  of  com 
posing  a  long  poem,  such  as  the  Farmer  s  Boy,  the  idea  beiner 
favored  by  a  visit  of  two  months  to  his  native  district,  where  he 
had  often  held  the  plow,  driven  a  team,  and  tended  sheep.  He 
returned  to  London  and  shoemaking;  but  some  years  elapsed 
before  he  produced  his  Farmer's  Boy,  which  he  composed  while 
he  sat  at  work  in  his  garret  in  Bell-alley,  with  six  or  seven  other 
workmen ;  and  nearly  GOO  lines  were  completed  before  Bloom- 
field  committed  a  line  to  paper.  The  poem  was  published  in 
1800,  was  translated  into  French  and  Italian,  and  partly  into 
Latin  ;  2G,000  copies  were  sold  in  three  years  ;  and  it  was  the 
dearest  of  the  lowly-born  poets  gratifications,  when  his  book  was 
printed,  to  present  a  copy  of  it  to  his  mother,  to  whom  he  then 
had  it  in  his  power,  for  the  first  time,  to  pay  a  visit,  after  twelve 
years'  absence  from  his  native  village. 

Bloomfield  was  a  little  boy  for  his  age.  '•  When  I  met  him  and  his  mother  at  the  inn,?' 
(in  town),  fays  his  brother,  "he  strutted  before  us  just  as  he  came  from  keeping  sheep, 
hogs,  etc.,  his  shoes  filled  full  of  stumps  in  the  heels  He,  looking  about  him,  slipped  up  ; 
his  nails  were  unused  to  a  Hat  payement.  I  remember  viewing  him  as  he  scampered  up — 
how  small  he  was.  I  hardly  thought  that  little  fatherless  boy  would  be  one  day  known 
and  esteemed  by  the  most  learned,  the  most  respected,  the  wisest,  and  the  best  men  of  the 
kingdtm." 

PRECOCITY    OF    SIR   THOMAS    LAWRENCE. 

We  have  few  instances  of  the  precocious  development  of  talent 
so  striking  as  are  presented  by  the  boyhood  of  this  great  artist. 
He  was  born  in  17G9,  at  Bristol,  where  his  father  kept  the  White 
Lion  inn,  and  was  more  noted  for  his  love  of  poetry,  and  writing 
rhyme,  than  for  his  success  in  business.  His  son  Thomas  was 
a  very  beautiful  boy,  and  had  been  remarkable  from  infancy  for 
his  sprightly  and  winning  manners.  His  father  taught  him  to 
recite  poetry ;  and  when  the  child  was  only  four  or  five  years 
old,  it  was  common  for  him  to  be  presented  by  his  parent  to 
strangers  who  visited  the  inn  at  Bristol,  and  subsequently  at  the 
Black  Bear  at  Devizes,  whither  he  had  removed.  At  four  years 
old,  young  Lawrence  could  recite  the  poem  of  Joseph  and  his 
Brethren  ;  at  five,  Addison's  Nymphs  of  Solyma ;  and  at  seven, 
Milton's  Lycidas.  He  was  already  able  to  use  his  pencil,  and 
to  take  likenesses,  which  art  he  had  acquired  entirely  of  himself. 
The  portraits  which  he  thus  sketched  are  affirmed  to  have  been 
generally  successful :  among  them  was  a  portrait  of  Lady  Ken- 
yon,  which  was  recognized  by  a  friend  twenty-five  years  after. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  255 

At  the  age  of  six,  Lawrence  was  sent  to  school  near  Bristol 
where  he  remained  scarcely  two  years ;  and  this,  with  a  few 
lessons  in  Latin  and  French,  was  all  the  education  he  ever 
received.  At  the  age  of  eight  years,  he  contributed  verses  to 
the  magazines ;  and  many  of  his  pieces  may  be  found  in  the 
European  and  Lady's  Magazines  from  1780  to  1787.  Daines 
Barrington  relates  that  at  the  age  of  nine,  without  instruction 
from  any  one,  Lawrence  copied  historical  pictures  in  a  masterly 
style,  and  succeeded  amazingly  in  compositions  of  his  own, 
particularly  that  of  Peter  denying  Christ.  In  about  seven 
minutes  he  scarcely  ever  failed  to  draw  a  strong  likeness  of 
any  one  present,  which  had  generally  much  freedom  and 
grace.  He  was  also  then  an  excellent  reader  of  blank 
verse,  and  would  immediately  convince  any  one  that  he 
both  understood  and  felt  the  striking  passages  of  Milton  or 
Shakspeare. 

Young  Lawrence's  early  talent  soon  made  him  generally 
known.  His  father  would  neither  permit  him  to  go  to  Rome  to 
study,  nor  to  take  lessons  at  home,  lest  it  should  cramp  his 
genius.  He  allowed  him,  however,  to  visit  the  houses  of  some 
of  the  neighboring  gentry,  where  he  saw  some  good  pictures, 
which  first  gave  him  an  idea  of  historical  painting ;  he  copied 
several,  and  at  last  produced  original  compositions  of  his  own. 
When  he  was  ten  years  old,  his  father  took  him  from  Devizes 
to  Oxford,  where  the  boy's  qualifications  were  announced,  and 
numbers  thronged  to  him  to  have  their  likenesses  taken.  From 
Oxford  they  removed  to  Salisbury,  and  thence  to  Weymouth,  at 
both  which  places  the  talents  of  the  young  artist  were  very 
profitable.  At  last  his  father  settled  at  Bath,  Thomas  being 
then  in  his  thirteenth  year.  Here  sitters  came  to  him  in  such 
numbers  that  he  raised  the  price  of  his  crayon  portraits  from  a 
guinea  to  a  guinea  and  a  half.  He  also  made  copies  of  pictures; 
and  one  of  the  Transfiguration  of  Raphael,  which  Lawrence 
sent  to  the  Society  of  Arts,  was  rewarded  with  a  silver-gilt 
palette  and  five  guineas.  He  remained  at  Bath  about  six  years, 
and  was  the  sole  support  of  his  father  and  family.  They 
removed  to  London  when  Thomas  was  in  his  eighteenth  year : 
he  became  a  student  of  the  Royal  Academy ;  was  kindly 
received  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds ;  and  on  his  death,  in  1792, 
was  appointed  his  successor  as  painter  to  his  Majesty  and  to  the 
Dilettanti  Society.  Thence  his  reputation  grew  steadily  till 
he  became  the  first  portrait-painter  of  the  age :  he  succeeded 
Mr.  West  as  President  of  the  Royal  Academy  in  1820.  Of 
his  earlier  career  it  has  been  truly  said  that  Art  presents  no 
parallel  case  of  an  equal  degree  of  excellence,  attained  so 


256  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

rapidly,  and  so  exclusively  without  instruction,  or  opportunity  of 
study. 

THE    DUKE    OF    WELLINGTON'S    SCHOOLS. 

Arthur  Wellesley,  the  illustrious  soldier-statesman,  was  born 
at  Dangan  Castle,*  at  Trim,  about  twenty  miles  from  Dublin,  in 
1769,  the  year  which  ushered  also  Napoleon  Bonaparte  and 
Cuvier  into  the  world.  The  castle  has  been  nearly  destroyed 
by  a  conflagration ;  but  the  chamber  in  which  the  Duke  was 
born  is  pointed  out  to  this  day.  Adjoining  the  castle  is  the 
humble  church  of  Laracor,  of  which  village  Swift  was  vicar ;  a 
tall,  thick  wreck  of  a  wall  is  all  that  remains  of  the  Dean's 
vicarage-house.  At  a  little  distance,  on  the  fair-green  of  the 
town,  is  a  Corinthian  column  in  memory  of  Wellington's  fame, 
and  surmounted  by  a  statue  of  the  hero.  The  present  parson 
age  at  Trim  was  a  favorite  residence  of  Maria  Edgesvorth. 
The  town  is  sad  and  dreary  to  look  at  in  its  state  of  crumbling 
decay ;  yet,  while  it  can  bring  remembrance  of  Swift  and  Miss 
Edge  worth,  and  while  men  can  say  of  it,  "here  Wellington  was 
born,"  it  will  continue  as  noted  as  one  of  the  greatest  landmarks 
in  the  world. 

The  Eatl  and  Countess  of  Mornington,  young  Arthur's  par 
ents,  placed  him  early  at  a  school  at  Trim  :  he  must  then  have 
been  a  very  little  boy,  for  one  of  his  school-fellows  relates  that 
when  Crosbie,  afterward  Sir  Edward,  of  balloon  notoriety,  hud 
climbed  to  the  top  of  "the  Yellow  Steeple,"  and  had  thrown 
down  his  will,  disposing  of  his  game-cocks  and  other  boyish  val 
uables,  in  case  he  should  be  killed  in  coming  down — little  Arthur 
Wellesley  began  to  shed  tears  when  he  found  that  nothing  had 
been  left  him. 

When  about  ten  years  old,  Arthur  was  placed  under  the  tui 
tion  of  the  Rev.  William  Gower,  at  Chelsea,  His  health  was 
indifferent,  but  improved  as  he  grew  up.  Occasional  illness 
produced  an  indolent  and  careless  manner,  and  often  a  degree  of 
heaviness.  Unlike  boys  of  his  age,  Arthur  was  rarely  seen  to 
play,  but  generally  came  lagging  out  of  the  school-room  into  the 
play-ground:  in  the  centre  of  it  was  a  large  walnut-tree,  against 
which  he  used  to  lounge  and  lean,  observing  his  school-fellows 
playing  around  him.  If  any  boy  played  unfairly,  Arthur 
quickly  gave  intelligence  to  those  engaged  in  the  game :  on  the 
delinquent  being  turned  out,  it  was  generally  wished  that  he, 

•It  is  also  etated  that  the  Duke  first  «iw  the  light  in  the  town  residence  of  his  parents, 
Mortiinj?Nin  House,  in  the  centre  of  the  eaaUrn  pule  of  Upper  Merrion  Street,  Dublin. 
The  proof  of  Datigan  Castle  being  the  Puke?s  birthplace  is.  however,  more  cimiuifltantial. 
The  most  notable  point  in  the  question  is  the  IndiOeraDM  with  which  it  wa»  treated  by  the 
pwiion  most  immediately  concerned.  The  Duke  kept  his  birthday  on  the  18th  of  June. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  257 

Arthur,  should  supply  his  place,  but  nothing  could  induce  him 
to  do  so ;  when  beset  by  a  party  of  five  or  six,  he  would  fight 
with  the  utmost  courage  and  determination,  until  he  freed  him 
self  from  their  grasp ;  he  would  then  retire  again  to  his  tree, 
and  look  about  him  as  quiet,  dejected,  and  observant  as  he  had 
been  before.  This  anecdote  was  communicated  to  the  British 
and  foreign  Review,  in  1840,  by  one  of  Arthur's  school-fellowe 
at  Chelsea. 

The  Duke  and  his  brother,  the  Marquis  Wellesley,  passed 
much  of  their  boyhood  at  Brynkinalt,  in  North  Wales.  On  one 
occasion  they  met  a  playfellow,  David  Evans,  and  his  sister, 
returning  from  school,  when  Arthur  commenced  a  game  at 
marbles  with  the  boy,  while  his  sister  walked  on.  Presently, 
her  brother  called  her  to  his  assistance,  as  Arthur,  he  said,  had 
stolen  his  marbles,  which  he  refused  to  give  up.  The  girl  insist 
ed,  and  then  came  the  struggle.  Arthur  was  about  twelve 
years  old,  and  his  brother  older ;  the  girl  about  ten,  and  her 
brother  two  years  younger:  the  battle  now  began  between  the 
girl  and  Arthur,  who  soon  dropped  his  colors,  handed  over  the 
marbles,  and  beat  a  hasty  retreat,  with  tears  in  his  eyes.  Mean 
while  Arthur's  brother  stood  at  a  distance,  inciting  the  fight,  but 
taking  care  to  keep  out  of  it.  Many  years  after,  the  Marquis, 
when  in  India,  wrote  to  David  Evans,  and  reminding  him  of 
their  games  in  boyhood;  and  the  Duke,  in  1815,  when  passing 
through  Denbigshire,  inquired  at  Brynkinalt  for  David  Evans,- 
and  recognized  him  as  his  old  playfellow,  but  they  never  saw 
each  other  again. 

Arthur  Wellesley,  by  the  death  of  his  father  in  1771,  became 
dependent  upon  the  care  and  prudence  of  his  mother,  a  lady,  as 
it  fortunately  happened,  of  talents  not  unequal  to  the  task. 
Under  this  direction  of  his  studies,  he  was  sent  to  Eton,  where 
very  little  seems  to  be  recollected  of  him  at  the  college.  As  he 
left  before  he  was  in  the  fifth  form,  his  name  was  not  cut  in  the 
Upper  School  when  he  went  away.  In  the  Lower  School,  how 
ever,  it  was  cut  upon  a  post,  but  afterward  erased ;  and,  about 
six-and-twenty  years  since,  in  some  alterations,  this  post,  with 
some  other  materials,  was  cleared  away. 

The  tradition  respecting  Arthur  in  the  school  is  that  he  was  a 
spirited,  active  boy,  but  occasionally  shy  and  meditative.  Among 
his  school-fellows  was  the  facetious  Bobus  Smith  (brother  of 
the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith),  who,  in  after-life,  when  Arthur  had 
conquered  wherever  he  had  fought,  used  to  say:  "I  was  the 
Duke  of  Wellington's  first  victory."  "  How  ?"  "  Why,  one  day 
at  Eton,  Arthur  Wellesley  and  I  had  a  fight,  and  he  beat  me 
soundly." 
17 


258  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

While  at  Eton,  Arthur  and  his  two  brothers  were  invited  to 
pa.«s  the  holidays  with  Lady  Dungannon,  in  Shropshire,  and, 
being  full  of  fun,  asked  each  other  what  news  they  should  tell 
when  they  arrived.  One  of  them  proposed  that  they  should 
say — a  pure  invention — that  their  sister  Anne  had  run  off  with 
the  footman,  thinking  it  was  likely  to  produce  some  sensation. 
This  they  accordingly  did,  and  greatly  shocked  Lady  Dungan 
non  ;  they  entreated,  however,  that  she  would  not  mention  the 
circumstance  to  any  one,  hoping,  as  they  said,  that  their  sister 
might  come  back  a<iain.  Dady  Dungannon  now  excused  her 
self,  having  promised  to  pay  a  visit  to  her  neighbor,  Mrs.  Myt- 
ton ;  and,  unable  to  keep  this  secret,  of  course  told  it  to  her. 
On  her  return,  she  nearly  killed  them  by  saying,  "Ah,  my  dear 
boys,  ill  news  travels  apace!  Will  you  believe  it?  Mrs.  Myt- 
ton  knew  all  about  poor  Anne !"  This  story  is  worthy  of  Sheri 
dan,  and  if  he  had  heard  it,  he  would  certainly  have  introduced 
it  in  one  of  his  plays. 

Arthur,  when  at  Eton,  lived  at  Mrs.  Ranganean's.  one  of  the 
best  boarding-houses  in  the  place.  There,  when  he  had  grown 
to  be  a  father,  he  one  day  took  his  sons,  Lord  Douro  and  his 
brother :  he  looked  over  his  bed-room,  made  several  inquiries, 
and  then  descended  into  the  kitchen,  and  pointed  out  to  his  sons 
where  he  had  cut  his  name  on  the  kitchen  door.  This  interesting 
memento  was  soon  after  removed,  during  some  repairs  of  the 
boarding-house  ;  and  the  Duke,  on  one  of  his  subsequent  visits, 
expressed  his  annoyance  at  its  disappearance. 

Between  Arthur  and  his  elder  brother,  had  any  one  specula 
ted  on  the  future  career  of  both,  how  erroneous  would  have 
been  his  conclusions  !  At  his  first  school,  Wellesley  gave  certain 
promises  of  a  distinguished  manhood ;  Wellington  did  not ;  and 
yet  how  easily  can  this  be  reconciled  !  The  taste  and  fancy  that 
afterward  produced  the  senator,  were  geimane  to  the  classic 
forms  of  Eton ;  while  tho-e  mental  properties  which  alone 
can  constitute  the  soldier,  like  metal  in  a  mine,  lay  dormant, 
until  time  betrayed  the  ore,  and  circumstances  elicited  its  bril 
liancy. 

From  Eton,  Arthur  was  transferred,  first  to  private  tuiiion  at 
Brighton,  and  subsequently  to  the  celebrated  military  seminary 
of  Angers,  in  France. 

For  the  deficiency  of  any  early  promise  In  the  future  hero  vre  arc  not  confined  to  nega 
tive  evidence  alone.  Ilia  relative  inferiority  \\:i-  the  hubjtft  of  some  concern  to  hi.«  vigilant 
mother,  and  had  It*  influence,  as  we  are  led  to  conclude,  in  the  Felecfion  of  the  n;iiitury 
jmifr-Ht.n  for  one  who  displayed  PO  little  of  the  faniilj  aptitude  for  elegant  M-ho)ai>hip. 
At  An^rs.  though  the  young  student  left  no  Mgnul  reputation  behind  hint,  it  is  cl«-nr  that 
his  time  must  have  been  productively  emplou-d.  Pi^nerol,  the  diiector  of  the  heminary. 
was  an  engineer  of  high  repute,  and  the  opportunities  of  M<  quiring  rot  only  prcu-rMonal 
know  lodge,  but  a  serviceable  mastery  of  the  French  tongue,  were  not  likely  to  hav«  been  lost 


Anecdote- Biographies.  259 

on  such  a  mind  as  that  of  his  pupil.  Altogether,  MX  years  were  consumed  in  this  course  of 
education,  which,  though  partial  enough  in  itself,  was  so  far  in  advance  of  the  age,  that 
we  may  conceive  the  young  cadet  to  have  carried  with  hiui  to  his  corps  a  nioru  than  aver 
age  store  of  professional  acquirements. 

We  quote  the  above  from  a  Memoir  which  appeared  in  the 
Times  journal,  in  1852,  immediately  after  the  Duke's  death.  It 
is  somewhat  at  variance  with  the  evidence  of  the  late  Dr.  Ben- 
ning,  who,  while  traveling  with  Blayney,  called  to  see  the  Col 
lege  at  Angers,  and  inquired  of  the  head  of  the  establishment 
if  lie  had  any  English  boys  of  promise  under  his  care,  when  he 
replied  he  had  one  IrL-h  lad  of  great  promise,  of  the  name  of 
Wesley,  the  son  of  Lord  Mornington. 

At  the  end  of  the  stipulated  term,  he  returned  to  England; 
and  it  would  appear  somewhat  unexpectedly  to  Lady  Morning- 
ton,  whose  first  intimation  that  he  had  left  France,  was  seeing 
him  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  when  her  ladyship  exclaimed, 
almost  angrily,  "  I  do  believe  there  is  my  ugly  boy,  Arthur." 

Meanwhile,  his  family  had  not  been  unmindful  of  his  pros 
pects ;  for  we  have  the  evidence  of  a  letter  in  the  possession 
of  a  gentleman  at  Trim,  in  which  Lord  Wellesley  states  that 
the  Lord  Lieutenant  had  been  two  years  under  promise  to  pro 
cure  a  commission  for  his  brother  Arthur,  and  had  not  been  able 
to  fulfill  it.  At  length,  in  March,  1787,  the  Hon.  Arthur  Welles- 
ley,  being  then  in  his  eighteenth  year,  received  his  first  corn- 
mission  as  an  ensign  in  the  73rd  Regiment  of  Foot.  The  only 
point  of  interest  in  his  position  at  this  moment,  was  the  fact 
that  though  the  young  officer  commanded  sufficient  interest  to 
bring  his  deserts  into  favorable  notice,  he  was  not  circumstanced 
as  to  rely  exclusively  on  such  considerations  for  advancement. 
He  possessed  interest  enough  to  make  merit  available,  but  not 
enough  to  dispense  with  it.  On  a  remarkable  occasion  in  after- 
times  he  spoke,  in  the  House  of  Peers,  of  having  "  raised  him- 
gelf "  by  his  own  exertions  to  the  position  he  then  filled. 

Here  our  sketch  of  the  Duke's  early  life  may  be  closed.  His 
service  of  the  Sovereigns  and  the  public  of  this  country  for 
more  than  half  a  century — in  diplomatic  situations  and  in  coun 
cils,  as  well  as  in  the  army — has  scarcely  a  parallel  in  British 
hit-tory.  His  Dispatches  are  the  best  evidence  of  his  well- 
regulated  mind  in  education.  No  letters  could  ever  be  more 
temperately  or  more  per.-picuously  expressed  than  those  famous 
documents.  Even  as  specimens  of  literary  composition  they 
are  exceedingly  good — plain,  forcible,  fluent,  and  occasionally 
even  humorous.  He  once  declared  of  the  Dispatches,  "  Well, 
if  these  were  to  be  written  over  again,  I  don't  think  I  should 
alter  a  word."  A  single  examination  of  these  documents — 
the  best  record  of  his  own  achievements  —  will  show  what  im- 


260  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

mense  results  in  the  aggregate  were  obtained  by  the  Duke, 
solely  in  virtue  of  habits  which  he  had  sedulously  cultivated 
from  his  boyhood — early  rising,  strict  attention  to  details, — tak 
ing  nothing  ascertainable  for  granted — unflagging  industry,  and 
silence,  except  when  speech  was  necessary,  or  certainly  harm 
less.  His  early  habit  of  punctuality  is  pleasingly  illustrated  in 
the  following  anecdote :  "  I  will  take  care  to  be  punctual 
at  five  to-morrow  morning,"  said  the  engineer  of  New  London 
Bridge,  in  acceptance  of  the  Duke's  request  that  he  would  meet 
him  at  that  hour  the  following  morning.  "  Say  a  quarter  before 
five,"  replied  the  Duke,  with  a  quiet  smile ;  "  I  owe  all  I  have 
achieved  to  being  ready  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  it  was 
deemed  necessary  to  be  so ;  and  I  learned  that  lesson  when  a 
boy." 

But  the  paramount  principle  of  the  Duke's  life  was  his  re 
spect  for  Truth,  which  he  observed  himself  with  earnestness 
akin  to  the  admiration  with  which  he  recognized  it  in  others : 
and  we  know  that  the  best  homage  we  can  pay  to  virtue  is  its 
practice. 

GEORGE    CANNING    AT    ETON    AND    OXFORD. 

This  accomplished  orator  and  statesman  was  born  of  Irish 
parents,  in  1770,  in  the  parish  of  Marylebone,  London.  His 
descent  on  the  paternal  side  was  from  an  ancient  family,  his 
ancesters  having  figured  at  different  periods  at  Bristol,  in  War 
wickshire,  and  in  Ireland.  His  father  died  when  the  son  was 
only  a  year  old.  The  early  education  of  Canning  was  superin 
tended  by  his  uncle,  Mr.  Stratford  Canning,  a  merchant  of  Lon 
don  ;  and  the  expenses  were  in  part  defrayed  from  a  small  estate 
in  Ireland  bequeathed  by  his  grandfather.*  George  Canning 
was  first  sent  to  Hyde  Abbey  School,  near  Winchester.  In  his 
thirteenth  year  he  was  entered  as  an  Eton  Oppidam,  and  placed 
in  the  Remove.  He  soon  distinguished  himself  as  a  sedulous 
student,  and  of  great  quickness  in  mastering  what  he  undertook 
to  learn ;  keen  and  emulous  in  contest,  yet  mindful  of  steady 
discipline.  At  the  same  time,  he  was,  says  Mr.  Creasy,  "  a  boy 
of  frank,  generous,  and  conciliatory  disposition,  and  of  a  bold 
manly,  and  unflinching  spirit."  His  Latin  versification  obtained 
him  great  distinction,  as  attested  by  his  compositions  in  the  Muscr 

*  Mrs.  Canning,  through  the  influence  of  Queen  Charlotte,  was  introduced  by  Garrick 
to  the  stage  afl  her  profession,  and  she  subsequently  married  Reddish,  the  actor.  Mean 
while,  her  son  George  had  become  the  associate  of  actors  of  a  low  class,  from  which  in 
fluence  he  was  rescued  by  Moody,  the  Comedian,  who  stated  the  b»y's  case  to  Mr  Strat 
ford  Canning,  and  thus  opened  the  road  by  which  he  advanced  to  power  and  fame.  From 
an  elegant  work  entitled  Poets  and  Stattsmtn  :  thiir  Homes  and  Haunts  in  the  Neighbor 
kood  of  Eton  and  Windtor.  By  William  Dowlin,  Esq.  1867. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  261 

Etonenses.  He  had  written  English  verses  from  a  very  early 
age ;  and  at  Eton,  in  his  sixteenth  year,  he  planned  with  three 
school-fellows  a  periodical  work  called  the  Microcosm,  which 
was  published  at  Windsor  weekly  for  nine  months. 

Among  Canning's  contributions  was  a  poem  entitled  "The 
Slavery  of  Greece,"  inspired  by  his  zeal  for  the  liberation  of 
that  country  from  the  Turkish  yoke,  which  one  of  the  latest  acts 
of  his  political  life  greatly  contributed  to  accomplish.  Another 
of  his  papers  in  the  Microcosm,  his  last  contribution,  thus  earn 
estly  records  his  love  of  Eton  :  "From  her  to  have  sucked  *  the 
milk  of  science,'  to  have  contracted  for  her  a  pious  fondness 
and  veneration,  which  will  bind  me  for  ever  to  her  interests, 
and  perhaps  to  have  improved  by  my  earnest  endeavors  the 
younger  part  of  the  present  generation,  is  to  me  a  source  of  in 
finite  pride  and  satisfaction." 

At  seventeen,  Mr.  Canning  was  entered  as  a  student  at  Christ- 
church,  Oxford,  where  he  gained  some  academical  honors  by 
his  Latin  poetry,  and  cultivated  that  talent  for  oratory  which  he 
had  begun  to  display  at  Eton.  His  splendid  Latin  poem  on 
the  Pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  " Iter  ad  Meccam"  gained  him  the 
highest  honor  in  an  University  where  such  exercises  are  deemed 
the  surest  test  of  scholarship.  At  Oxford  he  formed  an  in 
timate  friendship  with  Mr.  Jenkinson,  afterward  Earl  of  Liver 
pool,  who  is  supposed  to  have  been  of  service  to  him  in  his 
political  career.  Canning's  college  vacations  were  occasionally 
passed  in  the  house  of  Sheridan,  who  introduced  him  to  Mr. 
Fox,  and  other  leaders  of  the  Whig  party.  On  leaving  Oxford, 
Canning  entered  at  Lincoln's  Inn ;  but  he  soon  abandoned  the 
study  of  the  law  for  the  political  career  that  was  promisingly 
opening  to  him. 

Canning  had  a  strong  bias  in  favor  of  elegant  literature,  and 
would  have  been  no  mean  poet  and  author  had  he  not  embarked 
so  early  on  public  life,  and  been  incessantly  occupied  with  its 
duties.  Even  amidst  the  cares  of  office,  he  found  time  for  the 
indulgence  of  his  brilliant  wit;  and,  in  conjunction  with  Mr. 
John  Hookham  Frere,  Mr.  Jenkinson,  Mr.  George  Ellis,  Lord 
Clare,  Lord  Mornington  (afterward  Marquis  Wellesley),  and 
other  social  and  political  friends,  he  started  a  paper  called  the 
Anti-Jacobin,  some  of  its  best  poetry,  burlesques,  and  jeux- 
desprit,  being  from  Mr.  Canning's  pen.  As  party  effusions, 
these  pieces  were  highly  popular  and  effective ;  and  that  they 
are  still  read  with  pleasure  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  the  poetry 
of  the  Anti-  Jacobin,  collected  and  published  in  a  separate  form, 
is  still  kept  in  print  by  the  publisher. 


262  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Among  the  coincidences  in  Mr.  Canning's  career,  it  may  bo 
mentioned  that  he  WLS  the  same  age  as  hi.s  fellow-collegian,  the 
Earl  of  Liverpool,  and  each  became  Premier,  Canning  succeed 
ing  Lord  Liverpool,  on  the  illness  of  the  latter,  on  April  12, 1827: 
he  died  in  the  following  August,  in  his57th  year,  and  was  buried 
clo-e  to  the  grave  of  Pitt,  his  early  patron.  The  next  day  after 
his  burial,  his  widow  was  made  a  peeress. 

Canning,  as  a  statesman,  we  are  reminded  by  his  statue  in 
Palace  Yard,  was  '*  ju>t  alike  to  freedom  and  the  throne ;"  and 
as  an  orator,  eloquent,  witty,  a  id  of  consummate  taste. 

SIR    WALTER    SCOTT — HIS    SCHOOLS    AND    READINGS. 

This  amiable  poet  and  novelist,  whose  genius  has  gladdened 
many  lands,  and  almost  every  country  of  the  civilized  world,  was 
born  at  Edinburgh,  in  1771,  in  a  house  at  the  head  of  the  Col 
lege  Wynd.  His  father  was  a  writer  to  the  Signet ;  and  his 
mother,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Dr.  Rutherford,  was  a  well- 
educated  gentlewoman,  mixed  in  literary  society,  and  from  her 
superintendence  of  the  early  tuition  of  her  son  Walter,  there  is 
reason  to  infer  that  such  advantages  influenced  his  habits  and 
taste.  In  an  autobiographical  fragment  discovered  in  an  old 
cabinet  at  Abbotsford,  after  Sir  Walter's  death,  he  says  he  was 
an  uncommonly  healthy  child,  but  had  nearly  died  in  conse 
quence  of  his  first  nurse  being  ill  of  a  consumption.  The  wo 
man  was  dismissed,  and  he  was  consigned  to  a  healthy  peasant, 
who  used  to  boast  of  her  laddie  being  what  she  called  a  grand 
gentleman. 

When  about  eighteen  months  old,  after  a  fever,  he  lost  the 
power  of  his  right  leg,  and  was  ever  after  lame.  Yet,  he  was  a 
remarkably  active  boy,  dauntless,  and  full  of  fun  and  mischief, 
or,  as  he  calls  himself,  in  Marmion, 

"  A  self-will'd  imp ;  a  grandame's  child." 

He  was  then  sent  to  the  farm-house  of  Sandy-Knowe,  the 
residence  of  Scott's  paternal  grandfather.  One  Tibbie  Hunter 
remembered  the  lame  child  coming  to  Sandy-Knowe — and  that 
he  was  "a  sweet-tempered  bairn,  a  darling  with  all  about  the 
house."  The  young  ewe-milkers  delighted  to  carry  him  abroad 
on  their  backs  among  the  crags;  and  he  was  very  gleg  (quick) 
at  the  upttake,  and  kenned  every  sheep  and  lamb  by  head-mark 
as  well  as  any  of  them.  But  his  great  favorite  was  Auld  Sandy 
Ormistoun,  the  cow-bailie ;  if  the  child  saw  him  in  the  morning, 
he  could  not  be  satisfied  unless  the  old  man  would  set  him 
astride  on  his  shoulder,  and  take  him  to  keep  him  company  as  he 
lay  watching  his  charge : 


Anecdote  Biographies.  263 

"  Ilere  was  poetic  impulse  given 
13y  the  green  hill,  and  clear,  blue  heaven." 

The  cow-bailie  blew  a  particular  note  on  his  whistle,  which 
signified  to  the  maid-servants  in  the  house  when  the  little  boy 
wished  to  be  carried  home  again.  Scott  told  a  friend,  when 
spending  a  day  in  his  old  age  among  these  well-remembered 
crags,  that  he  delighted  to  roll  about  on  the  grass  all  day  long 
in  the  midst  of  the  flock,  and  that  the  sort  of  fellowship  he  thus 
formed  with  the  sheep  and  lambs  had  impressed  his  mind  with 
a  degree  of  affectionate  feeling  toward  them  which  had  lasted 
through  life.  There  is  a  story  of  his  having  been  forgotten  one 
day  among  the  knolls  when  a  thunder-storm  came  on ;  and  his 
aunt,  suddenly  recollecting  his  situation,  and  running  out  to 
bring  him  home,  is  said  to  have  found  him  lying  on  his  back, 
clapping  his  hands  at  the  lightning,  and  crying  out,  "Bonny! 
Bonny  !"  at  every  flash. 

Scott  thus  relates  his  early  impressions  at  Sandy-Knowe : 

This  was  during  the  heat  of  the  American  war,  and  I  remember  being  as  anxious,  on 
my  uncle's  weekly  visits  (tor  we  heard  news  at  no  other  time),  to  hear  of  the  defeat  of 
Washington,  as  if  I  had  some  deep  and  personal  cause  of  antipathy  to  him.  I  know  not 
how  this  was  combined  with  a  very  strong  prejudice  in  favor  of  the  Stuart  family,  which  I 
had  originally  imbibed  from  the  song  and  tales  of  the  .Jacobites.  This  latter  poiitical 
propensity  was  deeply  confirmed  by  the  stories  told  in  my  hearing  of  the  cruelties  exer 
cised  in  the  executions  at  Carlisle,  and  in  the  Highlands,  after  the  battle  of  Culloden.  One 
or  two  of  our  own  distant  relations  had  fallen  on  that  occasion,  and  I  remember  detesting 
the  name  of  Cumberland  with  more  than  infant  hatred.  Mr.  Curie,  farmer,  at  Yetbyre, 
had  been  present  at  their  execution ;  nnd  it  was,  probably,  from  him  that  I  first  heard 
these  tragic  tales,  which  made  go  great  an  impression  on  me.  The  local  information  which 
I  conceive  had  some  share  in  forming  my  future  taste  and  pursuits,  I  derived  from  the 
old  songs  and  tales  which  then  formed  the  amusements  of  a  retired  country  family.  My 
grandmother,  in  whose  youth  the  old  Border  depredations  were  matter  of  recent  tradition, 
used  to  tell  me  many  a  tale  of  Watt  of  Harden,  Wight,  Willie  of  Aikwood,  Jamie  Tellfer, 
of  the  fair  Dodhead.  and  other  heroes  —  merrymen  all  of  the  persuasion  and  calling  of 
Robin  Hood  and  Little  John.  ....  Two  or  three  old  books  which  lay  in  the  window- 
seat  were  explored  for  my  amusement  in  the  tedious  winter  days.  Automathes  and  Ram 
say's  Tea-table  Miscellany  were  my  favorites;  although,  at  a  later  period,  an  odd  volume 
of  Josephus's  Wars  of  the  Jews  divided  my  partiality. 

My  kind  and  affectionate  aunt,  Miss  Janet  Scott,  whose  memory  will  ever  be  dear  to  me, 
used  to  read  these  works  to'rne  with  admirable  patience,  and  I  could  repeat  long  passages 
by  heart.  The  ballad  of  Hardyknute  I  was  early  master  of,  to  the  great  annoyance  of 
almost  our  only  visitor,  the  worthy  clergyman  of  tue  parish,  Dr.  Duncan,  who  had  not 
patience  to  have  a  sober  chat  interrupted  by  my  shouting  forth  this  ditty.  Met  bin  ks  1  see 
his  tall,  thin,  emaciated  figure,  his  legs  cased  in  clasped  gambadoes,  and  his  face  of  a 
length  that  would  have  livaled  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha's,  and  hear  him  exclaiming, 
i-  One  may  as  well  speak  in  the  mouth  of  a  cannon  as  where  that  child  is." 

In  his  fourth  year,  Scott  was  taken  by  his  aunt  to  Bath,  in 
expectation  that  the  waters  might  prove  of  some  advantage  to 
his  lameness,  but  to  little  purpose.  At  Bath,  he  learned  to  read 
at  a  dame-school,  and  had  an  occasional  lesson  from  his  aunt. 
Afterward,  when  grown  a  big  boy,  he  had  a  few  lessons  at  Edin 
burgh,  but  never  acquired  a  just  pronunciation,  nor  could  he 
read  with  much  propriety.  At  Bath,  Scott  saw  the  venerable 
John  Home,  author  of  Douglas;  and  his  uncle,  Captain 
Robert  Scott,  introduced  him  to  the  little  amusements  which 


2G4  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

suited  his  age,  and  to  the  theatre.  One  evening,  when  the  play 
was  As  You  Like  It,  Scott  was  so  scandalized  at  the  quarrel  be 
tween  Orlando  and  his  brother,  that  he  screamed  out,  "  A'n't 
they  brothers  ?  " 

Scott  now  returned  to  Edinburgh. 

"In  1779  (he  says),  I  was  sent  to  the  second  class  of  the  Grammar  School,  or  High 
School,  of  Edinburgh,  then  taught  by  Mr  Luke  Fracer,  a  good  Latin  scholar,  and  a  worthy 
man  Our  class  contained  some  very  excellent  scholars.  The  first  Dux  was  James  Huchun, 
who  retained  his  honored  place  almost  without  a  day's  interval  all  the  while  we  were  at 

the  High  School The  next  best  scholar  (xtd  Inngn  inttrvaJlo)  were  my  friend 

David  Douglas,  the  heir  and  fln-e  of  the  celebrated  Adam  Smith,  and  James  Hope,  now  a 
writer  to  the  Signet.  As  for  myself,  I  glanced  like  a  meteor  from  one  end  of  the  class  to 
the  other,  and  commonly  disgusted  my  kind  master  as  much  by  my  negligence  and  friv 
olity,  as  I  occasionally  pleased  him  by  flach.es  of  intellect  and  talent.  Among  my  com 
panions,  my  good  nature  and  a  flow  of  ready  imagination  rendered  me  very  popular. 
Boys  are  uncommonly  just  in  their  feelings,  and  at  least  equally  generous.  My  lameness, 
and  the  efforts  which  I  made  to  supply  that  disadvantage,  by  making  up  in  address  what 
I  wanted  in  activity,  engaged  the  latter  principle  in  my  favor ;  and  in  the  winter  play  - 
hours,  when  hard  exercise  was  impossible,  my  tales  used  to  assemble  an  admiring  au 
dience  like  Luckie  Brown's  fireside,  and  happy  was  he  that  could  sit  next  to  the  inexhaust- 
ible  narrator.  I  was  also,  though  often  negligent  at  my  own  task,  always  ready  to  assist  my 
friends  :  and  hence  1  had  a  little  party  of  staunch  partisans  and  adherents,  stout  of  hand 
and  heart,  though  somewhat  dull  of  head,  the  very  tools  for  raising  a  hero  to  eminence. 
So  on  the  whole,  I  made  •  brighter  figure  in  the  yard  than  in  the  class.'' 

Mr.  Lockhart  notes  upon  these  reminiscences,  that  a  school 
fellow,  Mr.  Claud  Russell,  remembers  Scott  to  have  once  made 
a  great  leap  in  his  class,  through  the  stupidity  of  some  laggard 
on  the  dult's  (dolt's)  bench,  who  being  asked,  on  boggling  at 
cunij  "what  part  of  speech  is  withT'  answered,  "a  substantive." 
The  rector,  after  a  moment's  pause,  thought  it  worth  while  to 
a?k  his  dux — "Is  with  ever  a  substantive?"  but  all  were  silent 
till  the  query  reached  Scott,  then  near  the  bottom  of  the  class, 
who  instantly  responded  by  quoting  a  verse  from  the  book  of 
Judges:  "And  Sampson  said  unto  Delilah,  if  they  bind  me 
with  seven  green  withs  that  were  never  dried,  then  shall  I  be 
weak,  and  as  another  man."  Another  upward  movement,  ac 
complished  in  a  less  laudable  manner,  Scott  thus  related  to  Mr. 
Rogers,  the  poet : 

"  There  was  a  boy  in  my  class  at  school,  who  stood  always  at  the  top,  nor  could  I  with 
all  my  efforts  supplant  him  Day  came  after  day,  and  still  he  kept  his  place,  do  what  I 
would  ;  till  at  length  I  observed  that  when  a  question  was  asked  him,  he  always  fumbled 
with  his  fingers  at  a  particular  button  on  the  lower  part  of  his  waistcoat  To  remove  it, 
therefore,  became  expedient  in  my  eyes ;  and  iu  an  evil  moment  it  was  removed  with  a 
knife.  Great  was  my  anxiety  to  know  the  success  of  my  measure  ;  ir  succeeded  too  well. 
When  the  boy  was  again  questioned,  his  fingers  sought  again  for  the  button,  but  it  was 
not  to  be  found  In  his  distress  he  looked  down  for  it ;  it  was  to  be  seen  no  more  than  to 
be  felt.  He  stood  confounded,  and  I  took  possession  of  his  place  :  nor  did  he  ever  recover 
it,  or  ever,  I  believe,  suspect  who  was  the  author  of  his  wrong.  Often  in  after-life  has  the 
sight  of  him  smote  me  as  I  passed  by  him  ;  and  often  have  I  resolved  to  make  him  some 
reparation  ;  but  it  ended  in  good  resolutions." 

The  autobiography  tells  us  that  Scott's  translations  in  verse 
from  Horace  and  Virgil  were  often  approved  by  Dr.  Adam. 
One  of  these  little  pieces,  written  in  a  weak,  boyish  scrawl, 


Anecdote  Biographies.  265 

within  pencil-marks  still  visible,  had  been  carefully  preserved 
by  his  mother ;  and  was  found  folded  up  in  a  cover  inscribed  by 
the  old  lady— "My  Walter's  frst  lines,  1782." 

At  Kelso,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  first  read  Percy's  Reliques, 
in  an  antique  garden,  under  the  shade  of  a  huge  plane-tree. 
This  work  had  as  great  an  effect  in  making  him  a  poet  as 
Spenser  had  on  Cowley,  but  with  Scott  the  seeds  were  long  in 
germinating.  Previous  to  this  he  had,  indeed,  tried  his  hand  at 
verse.  The  following,  among  other  lines,  were  discovered 
wrapped  up  in  a  cover  inscribed  by  Dr.  Adam,  of  the  High 
School,  "Walter  Scott,  July,  1783:" 

ON  THE  SETTING  SUN. 

Those  evening  clouds,  that  setting  ray, 
And  beauteous  tints  serve  to  display 

Their  great  Creator's  pniife; 
Then  let  the  ehort-lived  thing  called  man, 
Whose  life's  comprised  within  a  span, 

To  him  his  homage  raise. 
We  often  praise  the  evening  clouds, 

And  tinis  so  gay  and  bold, 
But  seldom  think  upon  our  God, 

Who  tinged  these  clouds  with  gold. 

In  1783,  Scott  was  placed  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
where  his  studies  were  as  irregular  as  at  the  High  School. 

Mr.  Lockhart  considers  Sco't  to  have  underrated  his  own 
academical  attainments.  He  had  no  pretensions  to  the  claim  of 
an  extensive,  far  less  of  an  accurate,  Latin  scholar ;  but  he 
could  read  any  Latin  author,  of  any  age,  so  as  to  catch  without 
difficulty  his  meaning :  and  although  his  favorite  Latin  poet,  as 
well  as  historian  in  later  days,  was  Buchanan,  he  had  preserved, 
or  subsequently  acquired,  a  strong  relish  for  some  others  of  more 
ancient  date — particularly  Lucian  and  Claudian.  Of  Greek  he 
had  forgotten  even  the  alphabet;  and,  in  1830,  having  occasion 
to  introduce  from  some  authority  on  his  table  two  Greek  words 
into  his  Introduction  to  Popular  Poetry,  he  sent  for  Mr.  Lock- 
hart,  who  was  in  the  house,  to  insert  the  words  in  the  MS.  At 
an  early  period,  Scott  enjoyed  the  real  Tasso  and  Ariosto ;  and 
read  Gil  Bias  in  the  original :  and  not  much  later,  he  acquired 
as  much  Spanish  as  served  for  the  Guerras  Civiles  de  Granada, 
Lazarillo  de  Tonnes,  and  above  all,  Don  Quixote.  He  read  all 
these  languages  in  after-life  with  about  the  same  facility.  Some 
what  later  he  acquired  German.  In  these  languages  he  sought 
for  incidents  and  images ;  but  for  the  treasures  of  diction  he  was 
content  to  dig  on  British  soil. 

At  the  age  of  seventeen,  Scott  saw  Robert  Burns.  The  poet, 
while  at  Professor  Ferguson's  one  day,  was  struck  by  some  lines 
attached  to  a  print  of  a  soldier  digging  in  the  snow,  and  inquired 


266  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

who  was  the  author ;  none  of  the  old  or  the  learned  spoke,  when 
Scott  answered,  ''They  are  by  Lun«zhorne."  Burns,  fixing  his 
large  bright  eyes  on  the  boy,  and  .-triding  up  to  him,  said,  "it  is 
no  eominon  course  of  reading  taught  you  this."  "This  lad,"  said 
he  to  the  company,  "will  be  heard  of  yet." 

Scott's  early  love  of  reading  was,  doubtless,  fostered  by  the 
circuin-tance  of  his  lameness.  He  had  just  given  over  the 
amusements  of  boyhood,  when,  to  use  his  own  words,  "a  long 
illness  threw  him  back  on  the  kingdom  of  fiction,  as  it  were  by 
a  species  of  fatality."  He  had  ruptured  a  blood-vessel,  and 
motion  and  speech  for  a  long  time  were  pronounced  to  be 
dangerous.  For  several  weeks  he  was  confined  to  his  bed,  and 
almost  his  sole  amusement  was  reading.  He  says: 

"There  waa  at  this  time  a  circulating  library  at  Edinburgh,  founded,  I  believe,  by  the 
celebrated  Allan  Kamsay,  which,  besides  containing  a  most  respectable  collection  of  books 
of  every  description,  was,  as  might  have  been  expected,  peculiarly  rich  in  works  of  fiction. 
I  was  plunged  into  this  great  ocean  of  reading  without  compass  or  pilot :  and  unless  when 
Rome  one  had  the  charity  to  play  at  chess  with  me,  I  was  allowed  to  do  nothing,  save  read, 
from  morning  to  night.  As  my  taste  and  appetite  were  gratified  in  nothing  else,  1  indem 
nified  ni}Felf  by  becoming  a  glutton  of  books.  Accordingly,  1  believe  I  re«d  almost  all  the 
old  romances,  old  pla\s,  and  epic  poetry,  in  that  formidable  collection,  and  no  doubt  was 
unconsciously  amamng  materials  fur  the  task  in  which  it  has  been  my  lot  to  be  so  much 
employed." 

Being  somewhat  satiated  with  fiction,  Scott  found  in  hi.-tories, 
memoirs,  voyages  and  travels,  events  nearly  as  wonderful  as 
those  in  the  works  of  imagination,  with  the  additional  advantage, 
that  they  were  at  least  in  a  great  measure  true.  Thus  Scott 
passed  nearly  two  years,  when  he  removed  into  the  country,  and 
would  have  felt  very  lonely  but  for  the  amusement  which  he 
derived  from  a  good  though  old-fashioned  library.  He  has  well 
described  these  solitary  and  desultory  studies  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Waccrley,  where  the  hero  is  represented  as  "driving  through 
the  sea  of  books,  like  a  vessel  without  pilot  or  rudder."  "He 
had  read,  and  stored  in  a  memory  of  uncommon  tenacity,  much 
curious,  though  ill-arranged  miscellaneous  information.  In  Eng 
lish  literature,  he  was  master  of  Shakspeare  and  Milton,  of  our 
earlier  dramatic  authors,  of  many  picturesque  and  interesting 
passages  from  our  old  historical  chronicles,  and  was  particularly 
well  acquainted  with  Spenser,  Drayton,  and  other  poets,  whose 
subjects  have  been  on  romantic  fiction — of  all  themes  the  most 
fascinating  to  a  youthful  imagination,  before  the  passions  have 
roused  themselves,  and  demand  poetry  of  a  more  sentimental 
description."  Other  favorites  were  Pulci,  the  Decameron,  and 
the  chivalrous  and  romantic  lore  of  Spain. 

Upon  his  recovery,  Scott  returned  to  Edinburgh,  and  resumed 
his  studies  in  the  law,  which  had  been  interrupted  by  illness. 
In  1791,  he  was  admitted  a  member  of  the  Speculative  Society 


Anecdote  Biographies.  267 

for  training  in  elocution  and  debate.  On  the  first  night  he  met 
there  Mr.  Jeffrey,  who  visited  Scott  next  day,  "in  a  small  den 
on  the  sunk  floor  of  his  father's  house,  in  George's-square,  sur 
rounded  with  dingy  books  ;"  and  thus  commenced  a  friendship 
between  the  two  most  distinguised  men  of  letters  which  Edin 
burgh  produced  in  their  time.  In  the  d^n,  Scott  had  collected 
out-of-the-way  things  of  all  sorts.  "  He  had  more  books  than 
shelves ;  a  small  painted  cabinet,  with  Scotch  and  Roman  coins 
in  ir,  and  so  forth.  A  claymore  and  Lochabar  axe,  given  him 
by  old  Invernahyle,  mounted  guard  on  a  little  print  of  Prince 
Charlie  ;  and  Broughtons  Saucer  was  hooked  up  again-t  the  wall 
below  it."  Such  was  the  germ  of  the  magnificent  library  and 
museum  which  Scott,  in  after-life,  assembled  in  the  castellated 
mansion  which  he  built  for  him-elf  at  Abbotsford .* 

Scott  succeeded  so  far  in  his  lucubrations  as  to  be  called  to  the 
bar  as  an  advocate  in  1792.  He  established  himself  in  good 
style  at  Edinburgh,  but  had  little  practice.  He  rarely  attempt 
ed  literary  composition  ;  nor  have  any  fugitive  pieces  of  Scott's 
youth  been  found  in  any  publication  of  the  day.  But  in  Dr. 
Anderson's  Bee  for  May  9,  1792,  the  following  notice  is 
thought  to  refer  to  a  contribution  from  Scott:  "The  Editor 
regrets  that  the  verses  of  W.  S.  are  too  defective  for  pub 
lication." 

About  this  time  Scott  employed  his  leisure  in  collecting  the 
ballad  poetry  of  Scotland ;  and  in  this  class  of  composition  he 
made  his  first  attempt  at  originality.  Thus  may  be  said  to  have 
commenced  his  literary  life  of  six-and-thirty  years.  He  breathed 
his  last  at  Abbotsford  in  1832 ;  his  mind  never  appearing  to 
wander  in  its  delirium  toward  those  works  which  had  filled  all 
Europe  with  his  fame.  This  fact  is  of  interest  in  literary 
history ;  and  it  accords  with  the  observation  of  honest  Allan 
Cunningham,  that  "Scott,  although  the  most  accomplished 
author  of  his  day,  yet  he  had  none  of  the  airs  of  authorship." 

Sir  Walter  Scott  received  his  baronetcy  from  George  IV. 
in  1820. 

LORD    HILL,    THE    WATERLOO    HERO. 

Rowland,  Lord  Viscount  Hill,  was  born  in  Shropshire,  in 
1772.  He  was  first  placed  at  Ightfield,  a  neighboring  village, 
and  thence  sent  to  Chester,  where  he  won  the  affections  of  his 

*Thc  splendor  in  which  Scott  lived  at  Abbotsford  was  entirely  obtained  from  the  pro 
ducts  of  his  pen  :  to  this  he  owed  his  acres,  his  castle,  and  his  means  of  hospitality.  In 
l^G,  through  his  losses  in  the  publishing  business,  his  debts  amounted  to  117,000'.  He 
would  listen  to  no  overtures  of  compOvSition  with  his  creditors — his  only  demand  was  for 
time.  He  retrenched  his  expenses,  took  lodgings  in  Edinburgh,  labored  incessantly  at  his 
literary  work,  and  in  four  years  realized  for  his  creditors  no  less  than  70,0(M.l 


268  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

school-fellows  from  his  gentle  disposition,  and  the  gallantry  with 
which  he  was  always  ready  to  assist  any  comrade  who  had  got 
into  a  scrape,  at  the  same  time  that  he  was  himself  the  least 
likely  to  be  involve'!  in  one  on  his  own  account.  lie  was  of 
delicate  constitution,  and  he  was  thrown  more  than  usually  upon 
the  care  of  Mrs.  Winfield,  wife  of  one  of  the  masters  of  the 
school.  It  is  one  of  the  delightful  traits  of  Hill's  character, 
that  the  grateful  affection  which  he  then  felt  for  this  amiable 
lady,  continued  an  enduring  sentiment  in  after-life,  and  was 
repeatedly  exhibited  after  the  delicate  school-boy  had  grown  up 
into  one  of  the  most  renowned  generals  of  his  time.  Thus, 
after  the  abdication  of  Napoleon  in  1814,  when  Lord  Hill 
accompanied  his  friend,  Lord  Combermere,  on  his  entry  into 
Chester,  where  he  himself  received  a  greeting  all  the  more 
cordial  from  his  having  spent  some  of  his  earlier  years  at  a 
Chester  school,  as  he  passed  along  the  streets  of  the  city  in  a 
triumphal  procession,  it  was  observed  that  his  eye  singled  out 
among  the  applauding  throng,  one  on  whom  he  bestowed  the 
kindest  recognition.  It  was  Mrs.  Winfield  whom  he  had  thus 
distinguished  :  he  had  never  forgotten  her  kindness  to  him  when 
a  boy. 

The  same  love  of  horticulture,  the  same  fondness  for  pet  ani 
mals,  which  characterized  Hill  in  after-life,  had  already  been 
exhibited  by  him  at  school,  where  his  little  garden  prospered, 
and  his  favorites  throve,  better  than  those  of  any  of  his  com 
panions.  But  there  is  another  characteristic  of  his,  which 
comes  with  something  like  surprise  upon  those  who  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  associating  the  name  of  Hill  so  closely  with  the 
battle-field.  "His  sensibility,"  says  Mrs.  Winfield,  "was  almost 
feminine."  One  of  the  boys  happened  to  cut  his  finger,  and  was 
brought  by  Rowland  Hill  to  have  it  dressed;  but  her  atten 
tion  was  soon  drawn  from  the  wound  to  Rowland,  who  had 
fainted. 

And  even  after  his  military  career  had  commenced,  when  it 
happened  that  a  prize-fight  was  exhibited  near  the  windows  of 
his  lodgings,  such  was  the  effect  produced  on  him  by  the  brutal 
ity  of  the  scene,  that  he  was  carried  fainting  out  of  his  room. 
So  little  does  there  require  to  be  in  common  between  the  most 
heroic  courage  and  the  coarse  and  vulgar  attribute  of  insensi 
bility  to  the  sight  of  blood  and  suffering.  He  explained  after 
ward,  in  reference  to  the  carnage  which  he  had  witnessed  in 
war,  that  he  had  still  the  same  feelings  as  at  first,  "but 
in  the  excitement  of  battle  all  individual  sensation  was  lost 
sight  of." 

Young   Hill  entered  the  army  in  1790,  and  upon  leave  of 


Anecdote  Biographies.  269 

absence  went  to  a  military  academy  at  Strasburg,  where  he 
remained  till  1791,  when  he  obtained  a  lieutenancy.  Lord  Hill 
greatly  distinguished  himself  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  and  was 
there  exposed  to  the  greatest  personal  danger:  his  horse  was 
shot  under  him,  and  fell  wounded  in  five  places  ;  he  himself  was 
rolled  over  and  severely  bruised,  and  for  half  an  hour,  in  the 
melee,  it  was  feared  by  his  troops  that  he  had  been  killed.  But 
he  rejoined  them  to  their  great  delight,  and  was  at  their  head  to 
the  close  of  the  day. 

COLERIDGE    AT    CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL    AND    CAMBRIDGE. 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  "logician,  metaphysician,  bard," 
may  be  said  to  have  commanded  a  larger  number  of  zealous 
admirers  than  any  other  literary  man  in  England  since  Dr. 
Johnson.  Coleridge  was  a  native  of  Devonshire,  and  was  born 
in  1772,  at  St.  Mary  Ottery,  of  which  parish  his  father  was 
vicar.  From  1775,  he  tells  us  in  his  Biograpkia  Literaria,  he 
continued  at  the  reading-school,  because  he  was  too  little  to  be 
trusted  among  his  father's  school-boys.  He  relates  further,  how, 
through  the  jealousy  of  a  brother,  he  was  in  earliest,  childhood 
huffed  away  from  the  enjoyments  of  muscular  activity  by  play, 
to  take  refuge  by  his  mother's  side,  on  his  little  stool,  to  read 
his  little  book,  and  listen  to  the  talk  of  his  elders.  In  1782,  he 
was  sent  to  Christ's  Hospital ;  and  after  passing  six  weeks  in 
the  branch  school  at  Hertford,  little  Coleridge,  already  regarded 
by  his  relations  as  a  talking  prodigy,  came  up  to  the  great  school 
in  London,  where  he  continued  for  eight  years,  with  Bowyer  for 
his  teacher,  and  Charles  Lamb  for  his  associate ;  Coleridge 
being  "the  poor  friendless  boy"  in  Elia's  "Christ's  Hospital 
Five-and-thirty  Years  Ago."  Here  Coleridge  made  very  great 
progress  in  his  classical  studies ;  for  he  had  before  his  fifteenth 
year  translated  the  hymns  of  Synesius  into  English  Anacreontics. 
His  choice  of  these  hymns  for  translation  is  explained  by  his 
having  even  at  that  early  age,  plunged  deeply  into  metaphysics. 
He  says :  "At  a  very  premature  age,  even  before  my  fifteenth 
year,  I  had  bewildered  myself  in  metaphysics  and  theological 
controversy.  Nothing  else  pleased  me.  History  and  particular 
facts  lost  all  interest  in  my  mind.  Poetry  itself,  yea,  novels  and 
romances,  became  insipid  to  me."  From  such  pursuits,  Cole 
ridge  was,  however,  weaned  for  a  time  by  the  reading  of  Mr. 
Lisle  Bowles's  Sonnets,  which  had  just  then  been  published,  and 
made  a  powerful  influence  upon  his  mind. 

He  describes  himself  as  being,  from  eight  to  fourteen,  "a 
play  less  dreamer,  a  heluo  librorum  (a  glutton  of  books)."  A 
stranger,  whom  he  accidentally  met  one  day  in  the  streets  of 


270  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

London,  and  who  was  struck  with  his  conversation,  made  him 
free  of  a  circulating  library,  and  he  read  through  the  collection, 
folios  and  all.  At  fourteen,  he  had,  like  Gibbon,  a  stock  of 
erudition  that  might  have  puzzled  a  doctor,  and  a  degree  of 
ignorance  of  which  a  school-boy  would  have  been  ashamed.  He 
had  no  ambition  :  his  father  was  dead;  and  he  would  have 
apprenticed  himself  to  a  shoemaker  who  lived  near  the  school, 
had  not  the  hiad-master  prevented  him. 

He  has  left  pome  interesting  recollections  of  Christ's  Hospital  in  his  time.  "  The  disci 
pline,"  he  says,  u  was  ultra-J-partan  :  all  domestic  ties  were  to  be  put  tuide.  '  Uoy,'  I 
remember  Hover  saving  to  me  or.ce,  when  1  was  en  ing.  the  first  da.v  of  my  return  ufter 
the  holidays,  '  Boy  !  the  school  is  your  father!  IJoy  !  the  school  is  your  mother  !  I'.oy  ! 
the  school  is  jour  bro'her  !  the  school  is  your  sister!  the  school  is  your  first-cousin  aud 
your  second-cousin,  and  all  the  rest  of  your  relations!  Let's  h.«ve  no  more  crjing.: " 

Coleridge  became  deputy-Grecian,  or  head-scholar,  and 
obtained  an  exhibition  or  presentation  from  Christ's  Hospital  to 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  in  1791.  While  at  the  University, 
he  did  not  turn  his  attention  at  all  to  mathematics;  but  obtained 
a  prize  for  a  Greek  ode  on  the  Slave-trade,  and  distinguished 
hims«  If  in  a  contest  for  the  Craven  scholarship,  in  which  Dr. 
Butler,  afterward  Bishop  of  Lichfield,  was  the  successful 
candidate. 

"  Coleridge,"  says  a  school-fellow  of  his>,  who  followed  him  to  Cambridge  in  "^792,  "  was 
Tery  studious,  but  his  reading  was  desultory  and  capricious.  He  took  lif.tle  exeivise ;  but 
ho  was  ready  at  any  Mine  to  unbend  his  mind  to  conver.-ation  ;  and  for  the  sake  of  this, 
his  room  (the  ground-H-.or  room  on  the  right  hand  of  the  staircase,  facing  the  great  gate) 
was  a  constant  rendezvous  of  conversation  — loving  fmnds,  I  will  not  call  them  loungers, 
for  they  did  not  call  to  kill  time,  but  to  enjoy  it.  V  hat  evenings  have  I  spent  in  tho  e 
rooms!  \\hat  suppers,  or  sizing!:,  as  they  were  called,  have  I  enjoved,  when  AIsch>lus, 
and  Plato,  mid  Thucvdides  were  pushed  aside,  with  a  pile  of  lexicons  and  the  like,  to  dis 
cuss  the  pamphlets  of  the  day  !  liver  and  anon  a  pamphlet  issued  from  the  pen  of  Iturke. 
There  was  no  need  of  having  the  book  before  us  — Coleridge  had  read  it  in  the  morning, 
and  in  the  evening  he  would  repeat  wholo  pages  vcibatim." 

Coleridge  did  not  take  a  degree.  During  the  second  year  of 
his  residence,  he  suddenly  left  the  University  in  a  lit  of  despon 
dency  ;  and  after  wandering  for  a  while  about  the  streets  of 
London,  in  extreme  pecuniary  distress,  terminated  his  adventure 
by  enlisting  in  the  15th  Dragoons,  under  the  assumed  name  of 
Comberbach.  He  made  but  a  poor  dragoon,  and  never  advanced 
beyond  the  awkward  squad.  He  wrote  letters,  however,  for  all 
his  comrades,  and  they  attended  to  his  horse  and  accoutrements. 
In  four  months  his  history  and  circumstances  became  known: 
he  had  written  under  his  saddle,  on  the  stable-wall,  a  Latin  sen 
tence,  (Eheu!  quam  infortunii  miserrimum  est  fuisse  felicem  !) 
which  led  to  an  inquiry  by  the  captain  of  his  troop;  and 
Coleridge  was  discharged  and  restored  to  his  family  and  friends, 
lie  returned  to  Cambridge;  and  >hortly  afterward  wint  on  a 
visit  to  an  old  school-fellow  at  Oxford,  where  an  introduction 
to  Southey,  then  an  undergraduate  at  Balliol  College,  became 


Anecdote  Biographies.  271 

the  hinge  on  which  a  large  part  of  his  after-life  was  destined 
to  turn. 

Charles  Lamb,  in  his  "  Christ's  Hospital  Five-and-thirty  Years 
Ago,"  has  this  delightful  recollection  of  his  fellow-Blue: 

Come  back  into  my  memory,  like  as  thou  wert  in  the  day-spring  of  my  fancies,  with 
hope  like  a  fiery  column  before  thee — the  dark  pillar  not  yet  turned — Samuel  Taylor  Cole 
ridge,  Logician,  Metaphysician,  Hard!  How  have  I  seen  the  casual  pas.-or  through  the 
cloisters  stand  still,  entranced  with  admiration  (while  he  weighed  the  disproportion  between 
the  xperch.  and  the  Kaib  of  the  joung  Mirandola),  to  hear  thee  unfold,  in  thy  deep  and 
sweet  intonations,  the  mysteiies  of  Jamblichus,  or  Plotinus  (for  even  in  those  years  thou 
vaxedst.  not  pale  at  such  philosophic  draughts),  or  reciiing  Homer  in  his  Greek,  or  Pin 
dar — while  the  walls  of  the  old  Gray  Friars  re-echoed  the  accents  of  the  insjiirrrJ  charity- 
boy!—  Many  were  the  "  wit  combats "  (to  dally  awhile  with  the  words  of  old  r'u'ler) 

between  him  and  '  .  V.  Le  G ,  ''which  two  I  beheld  liku  a  Spanish  great  galleon,  and 

an  English  man-of-war;  Master  Coleridge,  like  the  former,  was  built  far  higher  in  learning, 
Folid,  l)Ut  slow  in  his  performances.  C  V.  L  ,  with  tue  English  niari-of-war,  lesser  in  bulk, 
but  lighter  in  sailing,  could  turn  with  all  tides,  tack  about,  and  take  advantage  of  all 
winds  by  the  quickness  of  his  wit  and  invention." —  The  Essays  of  Elia. 

ROBERT    SOUTIIEY    AT    HIS    SCHOOLS,   AND    AT    OXFORD. 

Robert  Southey,  the  business  of  whose  life  was  the  pursuit  of 
literature,  and  the  first  and  last  joy  of  his  heart,  was  born  in  the 
city  of  Bristol,  in  1774,  and  was  the  son  of  a  small  tradesman.* 
His  childhood,  however,  was  not  passed  at  home,  but  from  the 
age  of  two  to  six,  at  the  house  of  Miss  Tyler,  his  aunt,  in  Bath. 
He  had  no  playmates;  he  was  never  permitted  to  do  anything 
in  which  by  any  possibility  he  might  contract  dirt;  he  was  kept 
up  late  at  night  in  dramatic  society,  and  kept  in  bed  late  in  the 
morning  at  the  side  of  his  aunt;  and  his  chief  pastime — for 
neither  at  this  time  nor  at  a  later  period  had  Southey  any  pro 
pensity  for  boyish  sports — was  pricking  holes  in  playbills — an 
amusement,  of  course,  suggested  to  him  by  Miss  Tyler,  and 
witnessed  by  her  with  infinite  dt'light.  As  soon  a3  the  child 
could  read,  his  aunt's  friends  furnished  him  with  books.  The 
son  of  Francis  Newbery,  of  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  and  the 
well-known  publisher  of  Goody  Two  Shoes,^  Giles  Gingerbread, 
"  and  other  such  delectable  histories  in  sixpenny  books  ibr  chil 
dren,  splendidly  bound  in  the  flowered  and  gilt  Dutch  paper  of 
former  days,"  sent  the  child  twenty  such  volumes. 

"This,"  says  Southey,  in  his  autobiography,  "was  a  rich  pres 
ent,  and  may  have  been  more  instrumental  than  I  am  aware  in 

*For  the  materials  of  this  sketch  the  writer  is  greatly  indebted  to  the  first  volume  of 
the  Life  anil  Lettfrx  of  Ri-brrt  Stiuthry.  Edited  by  his  Son,  the  Her.  Charles  Cuthbert 
Southey,  M.A.  1849.  In  this  work,  the  narrative  in  the  exquisite  fragment  of  Autobi 
ography  leases  at  \Vt8tminster  School,  when  Southey  had  hardly  attained  his  fifteenth 
year. 

t  "  Godwin,  the  author  of  CaJfb  Williams,  who  had  been  a  child's  publisher  himself, 
had  always  a  strong  persuasion  that  Goldsmith,  wrote  Gnody  Two  Shots;  and  if  so,  the 
effort  belongs  to  1763;  Mrs.  Margery,  radiant  with  gold  and  gingerbread,  and  rich  in  pic 
tures  as  extravagantly  ill-drawn  as  they  ar«  dear  and  well  remembered,  made  her  appear 
ance  at  CiuUtuias." — Life  and  Adventures  of  Oliver  Goldsmith.  By  John  Foster.  ..848. 
Page  300. 


272  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

giving  me  that  love  of  books,  and  that  decided  determination  to 
literature,  as  the  one  thing  desirable,  which  manifested  itself 
from  my  childhood,  and  which  no  circumstance  in  after-life  ever 
slackened  or  abated." 

Southey's  first  school  was  in  the  village  of  Corston,  nine  miles 
from  Bristol :  it  is  described  in  one  of  his  earliest  poems  extant 
(the  Retrospect),  written  after  he  had  visited  the  house  in  1793. 
It  had  been  the  mansion  of  some  decayed  family,  and  had  its 
walled-gardens,  summer-houses,  gate-pillars,  a  large  orchard,  and 
fine  old  walnut-trees ;  the  garden  was  the  playground ;  and 
Southey  recollected  of  the  interior  a  black  oaken  staircase  from 
the  hall,  and  the  school-room  hung  with  faded  tapestry,  behind 
which  the  boys  kept  their  hoards  of  crabs.  The  master  was  a 
remarkable  man,  but  an  unfit  tutor :  his  whole  delight  was  math 
ematics  and  astronomy,  and  he  had  constructed  an  orrery  so 
large  that  it  filled  a  room.  Southey  speaks  of  his  ornamental 
penmanship* — such  as  flourishing  an  angel,  a  serpent,  a  fish,  or 
a  pen,  and  even  historical  pictures ;  and  grand  spelling-matches 
of  puxzling  words  hunted  from  the  dictionary.  Here  Southey 
read  Cordery  and  Erasmus,  and  got  into  Phxdrus. 

Before  the  boy  was  seven  years  old,  he  had  been  at  the  the 
atre  more  frequently  than  he  afterward  went  from  the  age  of 
twenty  till  his  death.  The  conversations  to  which  he  listened 
were  invariably  of  actors,  of  authors,  and  of  the  triumphs  of 
both ;  the  familiar  books  of  the  household  were  tragedies  and 
the  "acting  drama."  Shakspeare  was  in  his  hands  as  soon  as 
he  could  read :  and  it  was  long  before  he  had  any  other  knowl 
edge  of  the  history  of  England  than  what  he  gathered  from 
Shakspeare's  plays.  "  Indeed,"  he  says,  "  when  I  first  read  the 
plain  matter  of  fact,  the  difference  which  appeared  then  puzzled 
and  did  not  please  me ;  and  for  some  time  I  preferred  Shaks 
peare's  authority  to  the  historians."  Titus  Andronicus  was  at 
first  Southey's  favorite  play.  He  went  through  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  before  he  was  eight  years  old,  reading  them  merely 
for  the  interest  which  the  stories  afforded  him,  but  acquiring  im 
perceptibly  familiarity  with  the  diction,  and  ear  for  the  blank 
verse  of  our  great  masters. 

At  the  same  tender  age,  the  resolution  was  first  formed  to  ex 
cel  in  the  profession  which  the  child  heard  extolled  for  its  dig 
nity  from  morning  till  night.  At  first  the  actors  of  plays  were 

•Southey  wrote  a  stiff,  cramp  hand,  but  remarkably  neat  and  regular.  He  states  that 
ho  set  the  fashion  for  black-letter  in  title-pages  and  half-titles,  from  his  admiration  of 
German-text  at  school. 

One  of  the  earliest  holiday  letters  which  he  wrote  was  a  description  of  Stonehenpe,  from 
the  Salisbury  Guide,  which  surprised  and  delighted  hU  master,  and  gained  Southey  great 
praise. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  273 

esteemed  beyond  all  other  men ;  these  in  their  turn  gave  place 
to  writers  of  plays,  whom,  almost  as  soon  as  he  could  hold  a 
pen,  the  boy  himself  began  to  emulate.  He  was  not  quite  nine 
when  he  set  to  work  upon  a  tragedy,  the  subject  being  the  con 
tinence  of  Scipio.  In  1782  he  went  as  a  day-boarder  to  a  school 
in  Bristol,  learning  from  his  master,  as  invariably  proved  the 
ca?e  with  him,  much  le.«s  than  he  contrived  to  teach  himself. 
Before  he  had  reached  his  twelfth  year  he  had  read  with  the 
keenest  relish  Hoole's  translations  of  Jerusalem  Liberated  and 
the  Orlando  Furioso,  and  had  been  entranced  with  the  Faerie 
Queen  of  Spenser. 

At  thirteen,  Southey  was  not  only  master  of  Tasso,  Ariosto, 
and  Spenser,  but  well  acquainted  also,  through  translations, 
with  Homer  and  Ovid.  He  WHS  familiar  with  ancient  history, 
and  his  acquaintance  with  the  light  literature  of  the  day  was 
bounded  only  by  the  supply.  A  more  industrious  infancy  was 
never  known;  but  it  was  surpassed  by  the  ceaseless  energy  of 
youth,  which,  in  its  turn,  was  superseded  by  the  unfaltering  and 
unequaled  labor  of  the  man. 

In  his  twelfth  and  thirteenth  years  he  wrote  three  heroic 
epistles  in  rhyme ;  made  some  translations  from  Ovid,  Virgil, 
and  Horace;  composed  a  satirical  description  of  English  man 
ners,  as  delivered  by  Ornai,  the  Tahitian,to  his  countrymen  ;  and 
next  began  the  story  of  the  Trojan  War  in  a  dramatic  form. 

Southey  was  removed  to  Westminster  School  early  in  1788, 
and  had  lor  his  tutor  Botch  Hayes,  so  named  from  the  manner 
in  which  he  mended  his  pupils'  verses ;  here  Southey  first  ap 
peared  in  print,  in  a  weekly  paper  called  the  Trifler,  in  imita 
tion  of  the  Microcosm  at  Eton.  He  next  set  on  foot  the  Flagel 
lant,  in  which  appeared  a  sarcastic  attack  upon  corporal  punish 
ment,  which  so  roused  the  wrath  of  Dr.  Vincent,  the  head-master, 
that  Southey  acknowledged  himself  the  writer  and  apologized, 
but  he  was  compelled  to  leave  the  school.  He  returned  to  his 
aunt  at  Bristol.  He  next  went  to  matriculate  at  Oxford ;  his 
name  had  been  put  down  at  Christ  church,  but  the  Dean  (Cyril 
Jackson)  having  heard  of  the  Flagellant,  refused  to  admit 
Southey.  He,  however,  entered  at  Balliol  College,  where  he 
went  to  reside  in  January,  1793;*  one  of  his  college  friends 
declares  that  ho  was  a  perfect  heluo  librorum  then  as  well  as 
throughout  his  life;  among  his  writings  there  is  abundant  evi 
dence  that  he  had  drunk  deeply  both  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 

*  lie  Foon  attacked  the  law  against  wearing  boots  at  Balliol ;  and  he  refufcd  to  have 
his  hair  dressed  and  powdered  by  the  college  barber,  which  was  customary  with  fresh 
men. 

18 


274  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

poets ;  and  his  letters  at  this  time  indicate  a  mind  imbued  with 
heathen  philosophy  and  Grecian  republicanism.  He  rose  at 
five  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  study ;  yet  he  used  to  say  that  he 
learned  two  things  only  at  Oxford — to  row  and  to  swim.  He 
loved  the  place :  in  one  of  his  delightful  letters,  he  says : 

When  I  walk  over  these  streets,  what  various  recollections  throng  upon  me !  what 
scenes  fancy  delineates  from  the  hour  when  Albert  first  marked  it  ns  the  heat  of  learning  ! 
Bacon's  study  is  demolished,  so  I  shall  never  have  the  honor  of  being  killed  by  its  fall ; 
before  my  window  Latimcr  and  Kidley  were  burnt,  and  there  is  not  even  a  stone  to  mark 
the  place  where  a  monument  should  be  erected  to  religious  liberty. 

No  attempt  was  made  to  ground  Sou  they  in  prosody  ;  and,  as 
this  defect  in  his  education  was  never  remedied  (when  he  went 
to  Westminster  he  was  too  forward  in  other  things  to  be  placed 
low  enough  in  the  school  for  regular  training  in  this),  Southey 
remained  to  the  last  as  liable  to  make  a  false  quantity  as  any 
Scotchman. 

In  his  nineteenth  year  Southey  completed  his  Joan  of  Arc. 
Next  year  Mr.  Coleridge  came  to  Oxford,  and  was  introduced 
to  Southey,  who  describes  him  as  "  of  most  uncommon  merit,  of 
the  strongest  genius,  the  clearest  judgment,  the  best  heart."  The 
two  friends  next  planned  the  emigration  scheme  of  "  Pantisoc- 
racy,"  *  which  was  soon  given  up.  Southey  left  Oxford  in  the 
spring  of  1795,  and  as  a  means  of  support,  with  Coleridge, 
gave  public  lectures,  which  were  well  attended.  The  poem  of 
Joan  of  Arc  was  next  printed  and  published  by  Mr.  Cottle,  of 
Bristol,  which  may  be  considered  as  the  commencement  of 
Southey's  long  and  arduous  career  as  an  author ;  for  it  has  been 
well  observed  that  "  no  artisan  in  the  workshop,  no  peasant  in 
the  field,  no  handicraftsman  at  his  board,  ever  went  so  young  to 
his  apprenticeship,  or  wrought  so  unremittingly  through  life  for 
a  bare  livelihood,  as  Robert  Southey." 

CHARLES    LAMB    AT    CHRIST'S    HOSPITAL. 

This  amiable  poet  and  essayist,  whose  writings,  serious  and 
humorous,  alike  point  to  some  healthy  and  benevolent  moral, 
was  born  in  the  Inner  Temple,  in  1775.  At  the  age  of  seven, 
he  was  received  into  the  school  of  Christ's  Hospital,  and  there 
remained  till  he  had  entered  his  fifteenth  year.  "Small  of 
stature,  delicate  of  frame,  and  constitutionally  nervous  and  timid," 

*  With  this  wild  scheme  of  ';  Pantisocracjy'  Miss  Tyler  was  so  offended  that  she  would 
never  again  Fee  him.     'Ihe  expenses  of  his  education,  both  at  school  and  college,  were  de 
frayed  by  hi*  uncle,  the  Hev   Herbert  Hill,  at  that  time  a  chaplain  to  the  British  Factory 
at  LUbon,  to  whom  he  so  gratefully  addresses  his  dedication  to  his  Colloquies  : 
"0  friend!  0  more  than  father !  whom  I  found 
Forbearing  always,  always  kind  ;  to  whom 
No  gratitude  can  speak  the  debt  I  owe." 


Anecdote  Biography.  275 

says  his  biographer,  Judge  Talfourd,  "  he  would  seem  unfitted 
to  encounter  the  discipline  of  a  school  formed  to  restrain  some 
hundreds  of  lads  in  the  heart  of  the  metropolis,  or  to  fight  his 
way  among  them.  But  the  sweetness  of  his  disposition  won  him 
favor  from  all ;  and  although  the  antique  peculiarities  of  the 
school  tinged  his  opening  imagination,  they  did  not  sadden  his 
childhood."  * 

"  Lamb,"  says  his  school-fellow  Le  Grice,  "  was  an  amiable, 
gentle  boy,  very  sensible  and  keenly  observing,  indulged  by  his 
school-fellows  and  his  master  on  account  of  his  infirmity  of 
speech.  His  countenance  was  mild ;  his  complexion  clear  brown, 
with  an  expression  which  might  lead  you  to  think  he  was  of 
Jewish  descent.  His  eyes  were  not  each  of  the  same  color : 
one  was  hazel,  the  other  had  specks  of  grey  in  the  iris,  mingled 
as  we  see  red  spots  in  the  blood-stone.  His  step  was  planti 
grade,  which  made  his  walk  slow  and  peculiar,  adding  to  the 
staid  appearance  of  his  figure." 

He  was  unfitted  for  joining  in  any  boisterous  sport :  while 
others  were  all  fire  and  play,  he  stole  along  with  all  the  self- 
concentration  of  a  young  monk.  He  passed  from  cloister  to 
cloister — from  the  school  to  the  Temple;  and  here  in  the 
gardens,  on  the  terrace,  or  at  the  fountain,  was  his  home  and 
recreation.  Here  he  had  access  to  the  library  of  Mr.  Salt, 
one  of  the  Benchers ;  and  thus,  to  use  Lamb's  own  words,  he 
was  "  tumbled  in  a  spacious  closet  of  good  old  English  reading, 
where  he  browsed  at  will  upon  that  fair  and  wholesome  pas 
turage." 

When  Lamb  quitted  school,  he  was  "in  Greek,  but  not 
Deputy  Grecian."  He  had  read  Virgil,  Sallust,  Terence,  selec 
tions  from  Lucian's  Dialogues,  and  Xenophon;  and  evinced 
considerable  skill  in  the  niceties  of  Latin  composition,  both  in 
prose  and  verse.  But  the  impediment  in  his  speech  proved  an 
insuperable  obstacle  to  his  striving  for  an  exhibition,  which  was 
given  under  the  condition  of  entering  the  church,  for  which  he 
was  unfitted  by  nature :  to  this  apparently  hard  lot  he  submit 
ted  with  cheerfulness.  Toward  the  close  of  1789,  he  quitted 
Christ's  Hospital :  thenceforth  his  employment  lay  in  the  South- 
Sea  House,  and  in  the  accountant's  office  of  the  East  India 
Company. 

Lamb  has  left  us  many  charming  pictures  of  his  school-days 
and  school-fellows,  which  must  have  been  as  delightful  to  him 
as  the  accounts  of  them  are  to  the  reader.  In  his  "  Christ's 
Hospital  Five-and-thirty  Years  Ago,"  he  says : 

*  The  letters  of  Charles  Lamb,  with  a  Sketch  of  his  Life.    By  Thomas  Noon  Talfourd, 
one  of  hie  Executors.    Vol.  i.    1837. 


276  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

"  We  had  plenty  of  exercise  after  school  hours  ;  and,  for  mvwlf,  I  must  confer,  that  I 
was  never  happier  than  in  them  The  Upper  and  the  Lower  Grammar  School*  were  held 
in  the  «ame  room  ;  and  an  imaginary  line  only  divided  their  bounds  Their  character 
w  i-  as  different  an  that  of  the  inhabitant*  on  the  two  rides  of  the  Pyrenees.  The  l.i-v. 
Jamos  Boyer  was  the  Upper-Muster,  but  the  Kev.  Mutrhew  Field  presided  over  that  portion 
of  the  department  of  which  I  h«d  the  good  fortune  to  be  a  member.  \\  e  lived  a  Jij'e  HA 
careless  as  birds.  We  talked  and  did  just  what  we  pleased,  and  nobody  molested  us.  We 
carried  an  accidence,  or  a  grammar,  lor  form  ;  but,  for  any  trouble  it  gave  us,  we  mi^ht 
take  two  years  in  getting  through  the  verbs  deponent,  and  another  two  in  forgetting  all 
that  we  h;id  learned  about  them.  There  was  now  and  then  the  formality  of  M\  ii.g  a  It-s 
poil,  but  if  you  had  not  learned  it,  n  brush  across  the  shoulder*  (just  enough  to 'disturb  a 
fly)  was  the  sole  remonstrance  Field  never  used  the  rod  ;  and,  iu  truth,  he  wielded  the 

cune  with  no  great  good  will—  holding  it  '  like  a  dancer  ' \Ve  had  classics 

of  our  own,  without  being  beholden  to  'insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome,'  lhat  | ».«.--•  <1 
current  amongst  us — Peter  Wilkins— the  Adventures  of  the  lion,  Captain  Kobert  Uoyle — 
the  Fortunate  Ulue  Coat  Boy  — and  the  like.  Or  we  cultivated  a  turn  for  mechanic  and 
fccientiGc  operations,  making  little  sun-dials  of  paper,  or  wielding  tho>e  ingenious  paren 
thesis  called  cat~cra.il les;  or  making  dr.v  peas  to  dunce  upon  the  end  ot  a  tin  pipe;  or 
studying  the  art  military  over  that  laudable  game  '  French  and  English,'  and  a  hundred 
other  such  devices  to  pass  away  the  time — mixing  the  useful  with  tne  agreeable— aa  would 
have  made  the  souls  of  Itosseau  and  John  Locke  chuckle  to  have  M-CU  us. 

"  Matthew  Field  hud  for  many  j  ears  the  classical  charge  of  a  hundred  children,  during  t'-e 
four  or  fivo  years  of  their  education  ;  and  his  very  highest  form  seldom  proceeded  further 
than  two  or  three  of  the  introductory  fables  of  Phnpdrus.  How  things  were  suffered  to  go 
on  thus,  I  cannot  guess  Boyer,  who  was  the  proper  person  to  have  remedied  these 
abuses,  always  affected,  perhaps  felt,  a  delicacy  in  interfering  in  a  province  not  strictly 
his  own.  I  have  not  been  without  my  suspicious,  that  he  was  not  altogether  displeased 
at  the  contrast  we  pre.«ented  to  his  end  of  the  school.  U'e  were  a  sort  of  helot*  to  his 
yout  g  Spartans.  He  would  sometimes,  with  ironic  deference,  send  to  borrow  a  rod  ot  the 
Under-Master,  and  then,  with  sardonic  grin,  observe  to  one  of  his  upper  boys,  '  how  neat 
and  fresh  the  twigs  looked.'  While  his  pale  studen's  were  battering  their  brains  over 
Xenophon  and  IMato,  with  a  silence  as  deep  as  that  enjoined  by  the  Samite,  we  were  enjoy 
ing  ourselves  at  our  ease,  in  our  little  Go<hen.  We  saw  a  litrle.  into  the  secrets  of  the  dis 
cipline,  and  the  prospect  did  but  the  mo? e  reconcile  us  to  our  lot.  His  thunders  rolled 
innocuous  forces  :  his  storms  came  near,  but  never  touched  us;  contrary  to  Gideon's  mir 
acle,  while  all  around  were  drenched,  our  Heece  was  dry.*  His  bo^s  turi.cd  out  the  better 
scholars;  we,  I  suspect,  have  the  advantage  in  temper  His  pupils  cannot  speak  of  him 
without  something  of  terror  alloying  their  gratitude:  the  remembrance  of  Field  conies 
back  with  all  the  soothing  images  of  indolence,  and  summer  slumbers,  and  work  like  play, 
and  innoren',  idleness,  and  Klysian  exemptions,  and  life  itself  'a  Placing  holi  lav.' 

"Though  sufficiently  removed  from  the  juiisdiction  of  Boyer,  we  were  near  enough  (as 
I  have  said)  to  understand  a  lirtle  of  his  system.  We  occasionally  heard  founds  of  the 
Ululantrs,  and  caught  glances  of  Tartarus  B.  was  a  rabid  jiedant  I5is  Kngl^h  sty  le  was 
cramp:,  to  barburisra  HU  Kaster  anthems  (for  his  duty  obliged  him  to  these  periodical 
flights)  were  grating  as  scrannel  pipes,  lie  would  laugh,  ay.  and  heartily,  but  then  it 
must  be  at  Flnccus's  quibble  about  Rex — or  at  the  trimis  xertnia*  in  vvttn,  or  intpirtre  in 
patinas  of  Terence— thin  jests,  whii-h  at  their  first  broaching  could  h:irdly  have  had  vis 
enough  to  move  a  Roman  muscle.— He  had  two  wigs,  both  pedantic,  but  of  different  omen. 
The  one  serene,  smiling,  fresh-powdered,  betokening  a  mild  day.  The  other,  MD  old,  dis 
colored,  unkempt,  angry  caxon,  denoting  frequent  and  bloody  execution  Woe  to  the 
school  when  he  made  his  morning  appearance  in  his  pussy,  or  pnwonaU  wi'e.  No  comet 
expounded  surer. — J  B.  had  a  heavy  hand.  I  have  known  him  d  uble  his  knotty  rist  at 
a  poor  trembling  child  (the  maternal  milk  hardly  dry  upon  its  lips)  with  a  '  Sirrah,  do  jou 
prwmuie  to  bet  your  wits  at  me7  ' 

******* 

l<  Oh,  it  is  pleasant,  a»  it  is  rare,  to  find  the  same  arm  linked  in  yours  at  for^y.  which  at 
thirteen  helped  it  to  turn  over  the  Cicero  Dr  Atniatia,  or  t-oirc  'ale  of  Antique  Friend 
ship,  which  the  young  heart  even  'hen  was  burning  to  anti.  Spate  Co-Gmian  with  S. 

waa  »f  n ?  who  has  since  executed   with  ability  various  diplomatic   functions  at   the 

Northern  courts.     Th was  a  tall.  dark,  saturnine  >outh,  sparing  of  spcet  h,  with  raven 

locks.  Thomas  Fanshaw  Middleton  followed  him  (now  Bishop  of  Calcutta),  a  scholar  and 
a  gentleman  in  his  teens."  t 


•  Cowley. 

t  A  paper  of  interest  akin  to  Lamb's  "  Recollections,"  was  communicated  by  a  quon 
dam  Blue,  Mr.  Peter  Cunningham,  F.S  A  ,  to  the  Husiratt  <l  L«mli<n  N>  jr.v  for  Decent  tier  19, 
1857  This  genial  and  clever  piece  of  picture-writing  is  entitled  "  Christ's  Hospital  and 
Christmas  EVM." 


Anecdote  Biographies.  . .  277 


SIR    HUMPHRY    DAVY    AT    PENZANCE  :     HIS    SCHOOLS    AND 
SELF-EDUCATION. 

Humphry  Davy,  who?e  genius  is  unrivaled  in  the  annals  of 
modern  chemistry,  was  born  in  1778,  at  Penzance,  in  Cornwall, 
where  his  father  was  a  carver.  He  was  a  healthy,  strong,  and 
active  child ;  he  "  walked  off"  at  nine  months  old,  and  before 
he  was  two  years  old  he  could  speak  fluently.  Before  he  had 
learned  his  letters,  he  could  recite  little  prayers  and  stories, 
which  had  been  repeated  to  him  till  he  got  them  by  heart ;  and 
before  he  had  learned  to  write,  he  amused  himself  with  copying 
the  figures  in  JEsop's  Fable?,  and  reading  the  Pilgrim's  Progress; 
of  the  latter  book  he  could  repeat  a  great  part,  even  before  he 
could  well  read  it.  When  scarcely  five  years  old,  he  made 
rhymes  and  recited  them  in  Christmas  gambols,  fancifully  dress 
ed  for  the  occasion.  His  disposition  as  a  child  was  remarkably 
sweet  and  affectionate.  He  had  an  extraordinary  strong  per 
ception,  which  is  attested  by  Dr.  Paris,  who,  in  his  Life  of  Davy, 
tells  us  that  "  he  would,  at  the  age  of  five  years,  turn  over  the 
pages  of  a  book  as  rapidly  as  if  he  were  merely  engaged  in 
counting  the  leaves  or  in  hunting  after  pictures,  and  yet  on  be 
ing  questioned,  he  could  generally  give  a  very  satisfactory 
account  of  the  contents.  The  same  facility  was  retained  by  him 
through  life." 

He  first  was  sent  to  a  school  at  which  reading  and  writing 
only  were  taught.  Thence  he  was  removed  to  the  grammar- 
school  at  Penzance,  kept  by  the  Rev.  W.  Coryton ;  and  subse 
quently  to  Truro,  under  Dr.  Cardew,  whose  school  produced 
more  men  of  distinguished  ability  than  any  other  in  the  West 
of  England.  Young  Davy  took  the  lead  in  his  class,  and  com 
posed  Latin  and  English  verse  with  facility ;  but  he  was  more 
remarkable  out  of  school,  and  by  his  comrades,  than  for  any  great 
advance  in  learning.  He  excelled  in  story-telling,  partly  from 
books,  especially  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  partly  from  old  people, 
particularly  from  his  grandmother  Davy,  who  had  a  rich  store 
of  traditions  and  marvels.  These  stories  were  narrated  by  Davy 
to  his  boyish  companions  under  the  balcony  of  the  Star  Inn;  and 
here,  with  his  play-fellow,  Howe,  a  printer,  of  Penzance,  Davy 
also  exhibited  his  earliest  chemical  experiments;  and  by  means 
of  those  of  an  explosive  nature,  many  a  trick  was  played  on 
the  innkeeper,  and  some  other  testy  folks  in  the  neighborhood. 
This  and  another  boyish  pursuit  followed  him  into  manhood  — 
namely,  fishing ;  for  when  a  child,  with  a  crooked  pin,  tied  to  a 
stick  by  a  bit  of  thread,  he  would  go  through  the  movements  of 
the  angler,  and  fish  in  the  gutter  of  the  street  in  which  he 


278  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

lived ;  and,  when  he  was  able  to  wield  a  fishing-rod,  or  carry  a 
gun,  he  roamed  at  large  in  quest  of  sport  in  the  adjoining  coun 
try.  Under  the  same  favorable  circumstances,  his  taste  for 
natural  history  was  indulged  in  a  little  garden  of  his  own,  which 
he  kept  in  order ;  and  he  was  fond  of  collecting  and  painting 
birds  and  fishes. 

Davy's  early  love  of  romantic  scenery  is  shown  in  a  poem 
composed  by  him,  descriptive  of  St.  Michael's  Mount,  and  the 
traditionary  history  of  its  having  been  in  the  midst  of  a  forest — 
in  the  following  extract: 

"  By  the  orient  gleam 

Whitening  the  foam  of  the  blue  wave,  that  breaks 
Around  his  granite  feet,  but  dimly  seen, 
Majestic  Michael  rises!  He  whose  brow 
Is  crowned  with  castles,  and  whose  rocky  sides 
Are  clad  with  dusky  ivy  :    He  whose  base, 
Beat  by  the  storms  of  ages,  stands  unmoved 
Auiidst  the  wreck  of  things — the  change  of  time. 
That  base,  encircled  by  the  azure  waves, 
Was  once  with  verdure  clad,  the  towering  oaks, 
Whose  awful  shades  among  the  Druids  strayed 
To  cut  the  hallowed  mistletoe  and  hold 
High  converse  with  their  Gods.:) 

"  Davy  was  thought  at  the  time  (says  his  brother)  a  clever 
boy,  but  not  a  prodigy."*  His  last  master,  Dr.  Cardew,  speaks 
of  his  regularity  in  his  school  duties,  but  not  of  any  extraordi 
nary  abilities ;  his  best  exercises  were  translations  from  the 
classics  into  English  verse.  At  the  age  of  fifteen,  his  school 
education  was  considered  completed,  and  his  self-education,  to 
which  he  owed  almost  everything,  was  about  to  commence. 

He  spent  the  greater  part  of  the  next  year  in  fishing,  shooting, 
swimming,  and  solitary  rambles ;  but,  at  length,  he  settled  to 
study.  Early  in  1795,  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  surgeon  and 
apothecary  in  Penzance  ;  and  about  this  time  he  commenced  his 
note-books,  the  earliest  of  which  contains  a  plan  of  study,  and 
hints  and  essays,  in  which,  says  Dr.  Davy,  "  with  all  the  daring 
confidence  of  youth,  he  enters  upon  the  most  difficult  problems 
in  metaphysics  and  theology,  and  employing  a  syllogistic  method 
of  reasoning  (which,  as  he  observes  in  his  Consolations  in 
Travel,  young  men  commonly  follow,  in  entering  upon  such  in 
quiries),  he  arrives,  as  might  be  expected,  at  a  conclusion  con 
trary  to  the  good  feelings  and  common  sense  of  mankind." 

In  the  following  year,  young  Davy  entered  on  the  study  of 
mathematics,  and  finished  the  elementary  course  ;  he  was  very 
systematic ;  the  propositions  are  all  entered  very  neatly,  and  the 
demonstrations  given  ;  the  diagrams  being  done  with  a  pen,  with 
out  the  aid  of  mathematical  instruments,  not  even  of  a  common 

•  Lifo  of  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  by  his  brother,  John  Dary,  M.D.,  F.R.S. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  279 

compass  and  ruler.  But  his  favorite  pursuit  was  metaphysics,  and 
his  rough  notes  show  an  acquaintance  with  the  writings  of  Locke, 
Hartley,  Bishop  Berkeley,  Hume,  Helvetius,  and  Condorcet; 
Reid,  and  other  Scotch  metaphysicians.  These  studies  he  soon 
associated  with  physiology.  In  1797,  he  commenced  in  earnest 
natural  philosophy  ;  and  just  as  he  was  entering  his  nineteenth 
year,  he  began  the  study  of  chemistry  with  Lavoisier's  Elements 
and  Nicholson's  Dictionary.  He  very  soon  entered  on  a  course 
of  experiments,  his  apparatus  consisting  mostly  of  phials,  wine 
glasses,  and  tea-cups,  tobacco-pipes,  and  earthen  crucibles ;  and 
his  materials  chiefly  the  mineral  acids  and  the  alkalies,  and  some 
other  articles  in  common  use  in  medicine.  He  began  to  experi 
ment  in  his  bed-room,  in  Mr.  Tonkin's  house  at  Penzance ;  and 
there  being  no  fire  in  the  room,  when  he  required  it  he  went 
down  to  the  kitchen  with  his  crucible.  Such  was  Davy's  rapidity 
in  this  new  pursuit,  that  in  four  months  he  was  in  correspond 
ence  with  Dr.  Beddoes,  relative  to  his  researches  on  "  Heat  and 
Light,"  and  a  new  hypothesis  on  their  nature,  to  which  Dr. 
Beddoes  became  a  convert.  The  result  was  Davy's  first  pub 
lication,  Essays  on  Heat  and  Light,  in  1799,  which  had  been  in 
part  written  a  few  months  before  he  had  commenced  the  study 
of  chemistry. 

"  Such,"  says  Dr.  Davy,  "  was  the  commencement  of  Hum 
phry  Davy's  career  of  original  research,  which,  in  a  few  years, 
by  a  succession  of  discoveries,  accomplished  more  in  relation  to 
change  of  theory  and  extension  of  science  than,  in  the  most  ar 
dent  and  ambitious  moments  of  youth,  he  could  either  have 
hoped  to  effect  or  imagined  possible." 

Another  of  Humphry's  early  associates  was  Mr.  Robert 
Dunkin.  a  saddler,  and  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends.  He 
was  an  entirely  self-taught  man,  and  in  addition  to  his  making 
saddles,  he  built  organs,  constructed  electrical  machines,  and 
wrote  verses.  He  made  experiments  in  company  with  young 
Davy,  in  which  they  were  assisted  by  Mr.  Tom  Harvey,  a  drug 
gist,  at  Penzance,  who  supplied  Davy  with  chemicals  for  making 
detonating  balls,  etc.  After  a  discussion  on  the  notion  of  Heat, 
he  was  induced,  one  winter's  day,  to  go  to  Larigan  river,  and  try 
if  he  could  develop  heat  by  nibbing  two  pieces  of  ice  together,  an 
experiment  which  he  repeated  with  much  c'clat,many  years  after, 
at  the  Royal  Institution. 

He  had  already  become  the  friend  of  Mr.  Gregory  Watt  (son 
of  the  celebrated  James  Watt),  and  with  him  visited  the  most  re 
markable  mines  near  Penzance,  collecting  specimens  of  rocks 
and  minerals.  And  here,  working  the  Wherry  Mine,  under 
neath  the  sands,  and  its  shaft  in  the  sea,  young  Davy  saw  a 


280  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

steam-engine  at  work — this  being  one  of  the  earliest  of  Watt's 
steam-engines  that  had  been  introduced  into  Cornwall.  About 
this  time  he  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Davies  Gilbert,  after 
ward  Davy's  successor  as  President  of  the  Royal  Society. 

Meanwhile,  Davy's  progress  in  medicine  was  considerable;  so 
that  in  the  fourth  year  of  his  studies,  he  was  considered  by  Dr. 
Beddoes  competent  to  take  charge  of  the  patients  belonging  to 
the  Pneumatic  Institution  at  Clifion,  thus  entering  on  his  public 
career  before  he  was  twenty  years  old.  Here  he  applied  himself 
with  great  zeal  to  complete  his  experiments  and  essays  on  Light 
and  Heat;  and,  above  all,  in  investigating  the  effects  of  the  gases 
in  respiration.  Of  these,  the  nitrous  oxide  was  one  of  the  first  he 
experimented  upon  ;  and  his  discovery  of  its  wonderful  agency 
was  the  origin  of  the  researches  which  established  his  character 
as  a  chemical  philosopher;  though  before  it  was  published  (in 
1800),  Davy  had  begun  that  series  of  galvanic  experiments  which 
ultimately  led  to  some  of  his  greatest  discoveries.  The  materials 
for  the  Researches  were  rapidly  collected:  Davy  says  in  a  rough 
draft  of  the  preface,  "These  experiments  have  been  made  since 
April,  1799,  the  period  when  1  first  breathed  nitrous  oxide.  Ten 
months  of  incessant  labor  were  employed  in  making  them  ;  three 
months  in  detailing  them.  The  author  was  under  twenty  years 
of  age,  pupil  to  a  surgeon-apothecary  in  the  most  remote  town  of 
Cornwall,  with  little  access  to  philosophical  books,  and  none  at 
all  to  philosophical  men." 

So  intense  was  his  application,  and  so  little  his  regard  for 
health  or  even  life,  that  he  nearly  lost  it  from  the  breathing  of 
carburetted  hydrogen,  and  was  compelled  for  a  time  to  leave  the 
laboratory. 

The  following  passage  from  a  note-book  shows  the  intellectual 
life  he  now  led,  as  well  as  the  variety  of  his  pursuits : 

"  Rf  locution  — To  work  two  hours  with  pen  before  breakfast  on  '  The  Lover  of  Nature  ;' 
and  '  The  Feelings  of  Kldon,'  from  six  till  eight ;  from  nine  till  two,  in  experiments  ;  from 
four  to  six,  reading  ;  seven  till  tea,  metaphysical  reading  (t.  e.,  system  of  the  universe)." 

He  now  began  to  discontinue  writing  verses.  In  a  letter  of 
this  time,  he  says:  "Do  not  suppose  I  am  turned  poet.  Philos 
ophy,  chemistry  and  medicine  are  my  profession."  Yet  he 
meditated  a  poem  in  blank  verse  on  the  Deliverance  of  tho 
Israelites  from  Egypt,  the  plan  and  characters  of  which  he  had 
sketched. 

He  had  now  during  the  short  period  of  little  more  than  two 
years,  whilst  he  was  at  Clifton,  published  the  Essays  on  Heat  and 
Light,  and  contributed  eight  important  papers  to  Nicholson's 
Journal.  A  higher  distinction  awaited  him :  the  Royal  Institu- 


Anecdote  Biographies.  281 

tion*  had  recently  been  founded  in  London;  and  in  May,  1802, 
"  Mr.  Davy  (late  of  Bristol)  was  appointed  Professor  of  Chem 
istry."  In  April  following,  he  gave  his  first  lecture  on  galvanic 
phenomena,  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Count  Rumford,  and  other  dis 
tinguished  philosophers,  being  present.  "  His  youth,  his  sim 
plicity,  his  natural  eloquence,  his  chemical  knowledge,  his  happy 
illustrations  and  well-conducted  experiments,"  and  the  auspicious 
state  of  science,  insured  Davy  great  and  instant  success.  In  the 
previous  year,  he  had  read  before  the  Royal  Society  a  paper 
upon  "  Galvanic  Combinations  ;"  and  from  that  period  to  1829, 
almost  every  volume  of  the  Transactions  contains  a  communica 
tion  by  him. 

At  the  Royal  Institution,  then,  Davy  began  his  brilliant  sci 
entific  career,  and  he  remained  there  until  1812.  His  greatest 
labors  were  his  discovery  of  the  decomposition  of  the  fixed  al 
kalies,  and  the  reestablishment  of  the  simple  nature  of  chlorine  ; 
his  other  researches  were  the  investigation  of  astringent  vege 
tables,  in  connection  with  the  art  of  tanning ;  the  analysis  of 
rocks  and  minerals,  in  connection  with  geology ;  the  comprehen 
sive  subject  of  agricultural  chemistry;  and  galvanism  and  elec 
tro-chemical  science.  His  lectures  were  often  attended  by  1000 
persons.  He  was  knighted  in  1812,  and  subsequently  created 
a  baronet. 

Davy's  best  known  achievement  was  his  invention  of  the 
miner's  Safety  Lamp  in  1815.  He  became  President  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  1820  ;  he  resigned  the  chair  in  1827,  and  re 
tired  to  the  Continent.  He  died  after  a  lingering  illness,  in 
1829,  at  Geneva,  where  he  is  buried.  A  simple  monument 
stands  at  the  head  of  his  grave :  there  is  a  tablet  to  his  memory 
in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  a  monument  at  Penzance,  his  birth 
place.  He  retained  his  love  of  angling  to  the  last :  not  long  be 
fore  his  death,  he  resided  in  an  hotel  at  Laybach,  in  Styria, 
where  the  success  with  which  he  transferred  the  trout  to  his 
basket  procured  him  the  title  of  "the  English  wizard."  He 
spent  the  greater  part  of  the  day  in  angling,  or  in  geologizing 
among  the  mountains. 

GEORGE    STEPHENSON,    THE    RAILWAY    ENGINEER,    AND    HIS 
SCHOOLMASTERS    AND    SELF-TUITION. 

In  the  present  age  of  great  social  changes,  the  application  of 
steam  to  locomotive  purposes,  or,  in  other  words,  the  invention 

*  The  Royal  Institution  has  been  appropriately  termed  "  the  workshop  of  the  Royal  So 
ciety."  Here  Davy  constructed  his  great  voltaic  battery  of  2000  double  plates  of  copper 
and  /-inc.  four  inches  square,  th«  whole  surface  being  128.000  square  inches.  The  miner- 
alogieal  collection  in  the  Museum  was  also  commenced  by  Davy.  It  must  not  be  omitted, 
that  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  experimenters  in  the  Photographic  Art. 


282  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

of  the  railway,  takes  foremost  rank,  and  confers  upon  its  intro 
ducer  the  high  merit  of  being  a  signal  public  benefactor.  This 
honor  is  due  to  George  Stephenson,  who,  from  being  a  poor 
"cow-boy,"  raised  himself  to  wealth  and  eminence,  and  without 
one  solitary  advantage  except  what  he  derived  from  his  own 
genius,  stamped  his  name  upon  the  most  wonderful  achievement 
of  our  times.  His  early  history  is  a  surprising  example  of  the 
triumph  of  singular  and  unerring  sagacity  over  difficulties. 
His  school  instruction  was  little  and  late;  but  his  education 
may  be  said  to  have  begun  almost  from  the  moment  he  saw 
coal-wagons  drawn  upon  the  tramway  before  his  father's  cot 
tage-door,  and  from  his  moulding  clay-engines  with  his  play 
mates. 

George  Stephenson  was  born  in  1781,  in  the  colliery  village  of 
Wylam,  about  eight  miles  west  of  Newcastle-on-Tyne,  amid  slag 
and  cinders,  in  an  ordinary  laborer's  cottage,  with  unplastered 
walls,  bare  rafters,  and  floor  of  clay.  His  father  was  the  de 
scendant  of  an  ancient  and  honorable  line  of  working  men,  and 
his  mother,  Mabel,  was  "  a  rale  canny  body ;"  but  the  wages  of 
the  former  as  a  fireman  amounting  to  no  more  than  twelve  shil 
lings  a  week,  schooling  for  George  was  out  of  the  question,  and 
he  was  taken  by  his  father  birdnesting,  or  told  stories  about  Sin- 
bad  and  Robinson  Crusoe  as  a  substitute.  His  interest  in  birds' 
nests  never  left  him  to  his  dying  day,  nor  were  other  sights  of 
his  childhood  less  identified  with  the  serious  business  of  his  life. 
In  the  rails  of  the  wooden  tram-road  before  his  cottage,  on  which 
he  saw  the  coal-wagons  dragged  by  horses  from  the  pit  to  the 
loading-quay,  half  the  destiny  of  an  age  was  latent,  to  be  evolved 
hereafter  by  the  very  boy,  who,  after  his  own  probation  was  over, 
had  to  keep  his  younger  brothers  and  sisters  out  of  the  way  of 
the  horses.  Thus  eight  years  passed  away,  when  the  family  re 
moved  to  Dewley-burn,  and  George,  to  his  great  joy,  was  raised 
to  the  post  of  cow-boy  to  a  neighboring  farmer,  at  the  wages  of 
twopence  a-day.  He  had  plenty  of  spare  time  on  his  hands, 
which  he  spent  in  birdnesting,  also  in  making  whistles  out  of 
reeds  and  scrannel  straws,  and  erecting  Lilliputian  mills  in  the 
little  water  streams  that  ran  into  the  Dewley  Bog.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  he  indicated  thus  early  that  bent  which  is 
termed  a  mechanical  genius.  His  favorite  amusement,  and  this 
deserves  to  be  noted,  was  the  erection  of  clay  engines,  in  con 
junction  with  a  certain  Tom  Tholoway.  The  boys  found  the 
clay  for  their  engines  in  the  adjoining  bog,  and  the  hemlock 
which  grew  about  supplied  them  with  abundance  of  imaginary 
steam-pipes.  The  place  is  still  pointed  out  "just  aboon  the  cut 
end,"  as  the  people  of  the  hamlet  describe  it,  where  the  future 


Anecdote  Biographies.  283 

engineer  made  his  first  essays  in  modeling.  As  the  boy  grew 
older,  and  more  able  to  work,  he  was  set  to  lead  the  horses  in 
plowing,  and  to  hoe  turnips,  at  the  advanced  wages  of  fourpence 
a-day.  Then  he  was  taken  on  at  the  colliery  as  a  "  picker,"  at 
sixpence  a-day,  whence  he  was  advanced  to  be  driver  of  the 
gin-horse  at  eightpence;  and  there  are  those  who  still  remember 
him  in  that  capacity  as  a  "grit  bare-legged  laddie,"  whom  they 
describe  as  "  quick-witted  and  full  of  fun  and  tricks."  lie  him 
self  had  some  misgivings  as  to  his  physical  dimensions,  and  was 
wont  to  hide  himself  when  the  owner  of  the  colliery  went 
round,  lest  he  should  be  thought  too  little  a  boy  to  earn  his 
small  wages.  His  fixed  ambition  was  to  be  an  engineman  ;  and 
great,  therefore,  was  his  exultation  when,  at  about  fourteen  years 
of  age,  he  was  appointed  fireman,  at  the  wages  of  one  shilling 
a-day. 

Thenceforth  his  fortunes  took  him  from  one  pit  to  another, 
and  procured  him  rising  wages  with  his  rising  stature.  At 
Throckley-bridge,  when  advanced  to  twelve  shillings  a-week,  "I 
am  now,"  sad  he,  "  a  made  man  for  life."  At  seventeen  he  shot 
ahead  of  his  father,  being  made  an  engineman  or  plugman,  while 
the  latter  remained  a  fireman.  He  soon  studied  and  mastered 
the  working  of  his  engine,  and  it  became  a  sort  of  pet  with  him. 
His  greatest  privilege  was  to  find  some  one  who  could  read  to 
him  by  the  engine-fire  out  of  any  book  or  stray  newspaper  which 
found  its  way  into  the  colliery.  Thus  he  heard  that  the  Egyp 
tians  hatched  birds'  eggs  by  artificial  heat,  and  endeavored  to 
do  the  same  in  his  engine-house.  He  learnt  also,  that  the  won 
derful  engines  of  Watt*  and  Boulton  were  to  be  found  described 

*  James  Watt,  the  great  improver  of  the  Steam-engine,  born  at  Greenock,  in  1736, 
received  his  early  education  mostly  at  home  ;  although  he  attended  for  a  time  the  public 
elementary  schools  in  his  native  town.  His  ill-health,  which  often  confined  him  to  his 
chamber,  appears  to  have  led  him  to  the  cultivation,  with  unusual  assiduity,  of  his  intel 
lectual  powers.  It  is  said  that  when  only  six  years  of  age,  he  was  discovered  solving  a 
geometrical  problem  upon  the  hearth  with  a  piece  of  chalk ;  and  other  circumstances 
related  of  him  justify  the  remark  elicited  from  a  friend  on  the  above  occasion,  that  he  was 
"no  common  child.1'  About  Ii50,  he  amused  himself  by  making  an  electrical  machine  ; 
and  it  is  related  that  his  aunt  upbraided  him  one  evening  at  the  tea-table  for  what  seemed 
to  her  to  be  listless  idleness :  taking  off  the  lid  of  the  tea-kettle  and  putting  it  on  again  ; 
holding  sometimes  a  cup,  and  sometimes  a  silver  spoon,  over  the  steam  ;  watching  the  exit 
of  the  steam  from  the  spout ;  and  counting  the  drops  of  water  into  which  it  became  con 
densed.  Hence,  the  boy  pondering  before  the  tea-kettle  has  been  viewed  as  the  embryo 
engineer  prognosticating  the  discoveries  which  were  to  immortalize  him.  During  his  youth 
he  indulged  his  love  for  botany  on  the  banks  of  Loch  Lomond,  and  his  rambles  among  the 
mountain  scenery  of  his  native  land  aroused  an  attention  to  mineralogy  and  geology. 
Chemistry  was  a  favorite  subject  when  he  was  confined  by  ill-health  to  his  father's  dwel 
ling  He  read  eagerly  books  on  natural  philosophy,  surgery,  and  medicine.  Leaving, 
however,  all  these  studies,  Watt  applied  himself  to  the  profession  of  a  mathematical  instru 
ment  maker,  and  after  a  time  settled  in  Glasgow,  where,  displaying  much  ingenuity  and 
manual  dexterity,  his  superior  intelligence  led  to  his  sh'-p  being  a  favorite  resort  for  the 
most  eminent  scientific  men  in  Glasgow.  Watt  needed  only  prompting  to  take  up  and 
conquer  any  subject ;  and  Professor  Robinson  states  that  he  learnt  the  German  language 
in  order  to  peruse  Leupold's  Theatrum  Machinarum,  because  the  solution  of  a  problem 
on  which  he  was  engaged  seemed  to  require  it ;  and  that  similar  reasons  led  him  sub.se- 


284  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

in  books,  and  with  the  object  of  mastering  these  books,  though 
a  grown  man,  he  went  to  a  night-school  at  threepence 
a-week  to  learn  his  letters.  He  also  practiced  "pot-hooks," 
and  at  the  age  of  nineteen  was  proud  to  be  able  to  write  his 
own  name. 

Stephenson  may  be  said  to  have  anticipated  a  Mechanics' 
Institute  at  the  bottom  of  a  coal-pit:  for  he,  and  others  of  the 
workmen  less  gifted,  made  their  companions  who  could  read  give 
them  some  little  instruction,  and  read  any  stray  paper  which 
might  reach  their  remote  village  in  the  days  of  the  Fist  Napo 
leon's  first  efforts  to  conquer  Europe. 

In  the  winter  of  1791),  George  removed  to  the  night-school 
kept  by  a  Scotch  dominie,  named  Andrew  Robertson,  who  was  a 
skilled  arithmetician.  Here  George  learnt  "figuring"  much 
faster  than  his  school-fellows — "he  took  to  figures  so  wonderful." 
He  worked  out  his  sums  in  his  bye-hours,  improving  every 
minute  of  his  spare  time  by  the  engine-fire,  solving  the  arith 
metical  problems  set  him  upon  his  slate  by  his  master,  so  that  he- 
soon  became  well  advanced  in  arithmetic.  At  length,  Robert 
son  could  carry  Stephenson  no  further,  the  pupil  having  out 
stripped  the  master.  He  went  on,  however,  with  his  writing 
lessons,  and  by  the  next  year,  1802 — when  he  signed  his  name 
on  his  marriage — he  was  able  to  write  a  good,  legible  round 
hand. 

By  improving  his  spare  hours  in  the  evening,  he  was  silently 
and  surely  paving  the  way  for  being  something  more  than  a 
mere  workman,  by  studying  principles  of  mechanics,  and  the 
laws  by  which  his  engine  worked.  By  steady  conduct  and  sav 
ing  habits,  he  not  only  sustained  the  pressure  of  the  times,  but 
procured  the  coveted  means  of  educating  his  son.  Soon  after 
ward  he  signalized  himself  by  curing  a  wheezy  engine,  at  which 
"all  the  engineers  of  the  neighborhood  were  tried,  as  well  as 
Crowther  of  the  Ouseburn,  but  they  were  clean  bet."  He  got 
10/.  for  this  job,  and  from  this  day  his  services  as  an  engineer 
came  into  request 

In  1814,  he  placed  a  locomotive  on  the  Killingworth  Railway; 
and  this  engine,  improved  in  1815,  is  the  parent  of  the  whole 
race  of  locomotives  which  has  since  sprung  into  existence. 
This  was,  indeed,  a  year  of  double  triumph  to  Stephenson,  for 
in  it  he  produced  his  Safety  Lamp  for  miners ;  though  Sir 
Humphry  Davy's  lamp  was  reported  to  be  something  more  per- 

q^ently  to  study  Italian.  Without  neglecting  his  business  in  the  daytime,  Watt  devoted 
hid  nights  to  various  and  often  profound  studies  ;  and  the  mere  difficulty  of  a  subject,  pro 
vided  it  was  worthy  of  pursuit,  seems  to  have  recommended  it  to  his  indefatigable  charac 
ter.  Thus  was  parsed  the  early  life  of  Watt,  previous  to  his  seriously  directing  his  atten 
tion  to  the  properties  of  »Usam. 


Anecdote.  Biographies.  285 

feet  than  what  was  called  "invention  claimed  by  a  person,  an 
engine-wright,  of  the  name  of  Stephenson." 

In  1825,  Stephenson's  locomotive  was  worked  on  the  Stockton 
and  Darlington  Railway;  and  in  1830,  he  drove  his  engine, 
"The  Rocket,"  upon  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  line,  across 
Chat  Moss,  at  the  rate  of  thirty  miles  an  hour,  and  thereby 
gained  the  prize  of  500/.  Thirty  years  after  he  had  been  a 
worker  in  a  pit  at  Newcastle,  he  traveled  from  that  city  to 
London,  behind  one  of  his  own  engines,  in  nine  hours ;  and 
Liverpool  and  London  have  raised  statues  of  George  Stephen- 
son,  the  Engineer,  to  whose  intelligence  and  perseverance  we 
owe  the  introduction  of  this  mighty  power.* 

BOYHOOD  AND  EARLY  DEATH  OF  HENRY  KIRKE  WHITE. 

Few  instances  of  early  death  from  ardor  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge  are  so  touching  as  that  afforded  in  the  brief  span  of 
the  life  of  the  amiable  and  gifted  Henry  Kirke  White.  He  was 
born  in  1785,  at  Nottingham,  where  his  father  followed  the 
business  of  a  butcher.  He  was  sent  to  school  at  three  years  of 
age,  and  soon  became  so  fond  of  reading  that  he  could  be 
scarcely  got  to  lay  down  his  book,  that  he  might  take  his  meals. 
At  the  age  of  seven,  he  attempted  to  express  his  ideas  upon 
paper;  his  first  composition  being  a  tale,  which,  however,  he 
only  communicated  to  the  servant,  whom  he  had  secretly  taught 
to  write.  Before  the  age  of  eleven,  in  addition  to  reading  and 
writing,  he  outstripped  his  school-fellows  in  arithmetic  and 
French.  Soon  after  this  he  began  to  write  verse.  He  assisted 
at  his  father's  business  for  some  time,  carrying  the  butcher's 
basket;  but  he  so  disliked  this  occupation,  that  at  the  age  of 
fourteen,  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  sto;;king-weaver.  But,  to  use 
his  own  words,  he  "wanted  something  to  occupy  his  brain  ;"  still, 
he  scarcely  dare  complain,  for  he  knew  that  his  family  could 
hardly  afford  to  educate  him  for  any  higher  employment.  His 
mother,  however,  moved  by  his  wretchedness,  after  he  had  been 
about  a  year  at  the  loom,  prevailed  upon  his  father  to  place  him 
in  an  attorney's  office  at  Nottingham;  where,  notwithstanding 
he  attended  the  office  twelve  hours  a  day,  he  applied  his  leisure 
to  studying  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages,  and  was  able,  in  ten 
months,  to  read  Horace.  He  also  made  considerable  progress 
in  Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese ;  in  chemistry,  electricity, 
and  astronomy;  while  his  less  severe  studies  were  drawing, 
music,  and  practical  mechanics ;  and  in  extempore  speaking,  he 

*The  narration  of  these  events  has  been  principally  condensed  from  Mr.  Smilea's  Life  of 
Ge  rge  Stffihenxnn  (publi-«hed  in  1857);  an  admirable  specimen  of  biographical  writing, 
earnest  and  unaffected,  and  in  every  way  worthy  of  its  great  subject. 


286  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

distanced  his  competitors  in  a  debating-society  which  was  then 
held  at  Nottingham. 

In  his  fifteenth  year,  he  sent  to  a  London  periodical,  the 
Monthly  Preceptor,  a  translation  from  Horace,  for  which  he 
received  a  silver  medal.  This  success  induced  him  to  print,  in 
1803,  a  volume  of  verses,  the  longest  of  which,  entitled  Clifton 
Grove,  is  in  the  style  of  Goldsmith.  This  publication  was 
harshly  criticised  in  the  Monthly  Review,  which  distressed  the 
young  poet  exceedingly ;  but  it  obtained  for  him  the  kindly 
notice  and  friendship  of  Mr.  Southey,  who  considered  the  poems 
"to  discover  strong  marks  of  genius."  Meanwhile,  Henry,  by 
a  course  of  religious  reading,  grew  ardently  devotional,  so  as  to 
increase  the  desire  which  he  had  long  felt  for  an  University 
education.  Despairing  of  this,  he  renewed  his  legal  studies  with 
such  severe  application,  as  rarely  to  allow  himself  more  than  two 
or  three  hours'  sleep  during  the  night,  and  often  not  going  to 
bed  at  all.  This  excessive  application  brought  on  an  alarming 
illness,  from  which  his  friends  thought  that  he  never  entirely 
recovered.  At  length,  in  1804,  he  quitted  his  employer  at  Not 
tingham,  and  after  a  year's  preparatory  study,  entered  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  where  a  sizarship  had  been  obtained  for 
him:  but,  says  Mr.  Southey,  "the  seeds  of  death  were  in  him, 
and  the  place  which  he  had  so  long  looked  on  with  hope,  served 
unhappily  as  a  hot-house  to  ripen  them."  His  exertions  at  the 
University  were  very  severe :  he  studied  for  a  scholarship,  but, 
through  ill  health,  could  not  come  forward.  lie  then  passed  the 
general  college  examination,  and  at  its  close  was  declared  the 
first  man  of  his  year.  As  an  instance  of  how  he  used  "to  coin 
time,  it  is  related  that  he  committed  to  memory  a  whole 
tragedy  of  Euripides,  during  his  walks."  At  the  end  of  this 
term,  he  was  again  pronounced  first  man :  a  tutor  in  mathe 
matics  for  the  long  vacation  was  now  provided  for  him  by  the 
college ;  but  this  distinction  was  purchased  at  the  sacrifice  of 
health  and  life :  he  went  to  London  to  recruit  his  shattered 
nerves  and  spirits,  but  he  got  no  better.  He  returned  to  the 
University  worn  out  in  body  and  mind,  and  died  after  an  attack 
of  delirium,  October  19,  1806.  Mr.  Southey  wrote  a  sketch  of 
his  life,  and  edited  his  Remains,  the  publication  of  which  proved 
highly  profitable  to  White's  family.  A  tablet  to  his  memory, 
with  a  medallion  by  Chantrey,  was  placed  in  All  Saints'  Church, 
Cambridge,  at  the  expense  of  Mr.  Boott,  a  young  American 
gentleman.  It  bears  the  following  inscription  by  Professor 
Smythe : 


Anecdote  Biographies.  287 

"Warm  with  the  fond  hope  and  learning's  sacred  flame, 
To  Granta's  bowers  the  youthful  poet  came  ; 
Unconquered  powers  the  immortal  mind  displayed, 
But  worn  with  anxious  thought,  the  frame  decayed. 
Pale  o'er  his  lamp,  and  in  his  cell  retired, 
The  martyr  student  faded  and  expired. 
Oh !  genius,  taste,  and  piety  sincere, 
Too  early  lost  !uiidst  studies  too  severe ! 
Foremost  to  mourn,  was  generous  Southey  seen, 
lie  told  the  tale,  and  showed  what  White  had  been ; 
Nor  told  in  vain.     Far  o'er  the  Atlantic  wave 
A  wanderer  came,  and  sought  the  poet's  grave  : 
On  yon  low  stone  he  saw  his  lonely  name. 
And  raised  this  fond  memorial  to  his  fume. 

Lord  Byron  has  consecrated  some  lines  of  pure  pathos  to  the 
memory  of  White,  who 

"  View'd  his  own  feather  on  the  fatal  dart, 
And  wing'd  the  shaft  that  quiver'd  in  his  heart." 

Henry  Kirke  White's  verse  is  fluent  and  correct,  plaintive  and 
reflective,  and  rich  in  fancy  and  description ;  and  he  affords  a 
fine  example  of  youthful  ardor  devoted  to  the  purest  and  noblest 
objects.  His  case,  has,  however,  been  referred  to  as  an  alarm 
ing  instance  of  the  danger  of  mental  pressure,  and  of  the  injury 
that  extreme  and  misdirected  application  of  the  mind  may  do  to 
the  body.  "  The  picture  of  a  Kirke  White,"  says  a  popular  writer, 
"dying  at  the  age  of  21,  of  nocturnal  study,  wet  towels  round 
heated  temples,  want  of  sleep,  want  of  air,  want  of  everything 
which  Nature  intended  for  the  body,  is  not  only  melancholy 
because  it  is  connected  with  an  early  death ;  it  is  melancholy 
also  on  account  of  the  certain  effect  which  would  have  followed 
such  a  course  unchecked  if  he  had  lived." 

Dr.  Forbes  Winslow,  however,  considers  this  illustration 
unfortunate.  "Kirke  White,"  he  adds,  "from  his  earliest 
infancy,  was  of  so  delicate  a  constitution  as  to  be  unfit  (as  was 
supposed)  for  any  active  occupation.  The  question  may  naturally 
arise — would  so  active  and  irritable  a  mind,  united  to  so  feeble 
a  frame,  have  lacked  opportunity  under  any  circumstances  of 
rapidly  wearing  out  both  itself  and  its  earthly  tenement?  The 
wasting  fever  of  such  a  mind  is  not  to  be  allayed  by  any  restric 
tions  as  to  hours  of  study,  rest,  or  general  hygiene."*  Although 
difference  of  opinion  exists  as  to  the  case  of  Kirke  White,  the 
effect  of  mental  labor  upon  bodily  health,  in  relation  to  age, 
temperament,  and  other  circumstances,  cannot  be  too  closely 
watched  ;  and  wherever  there  is  an  insatiate  craving  after  knowl 
edge,  so  as  to  produce  an  overgrowth  of  mind,  the  extreme 
application  cannot  too  soon  be  restrained. 

*  Journal  of  Psychological  Medicine  and  Mental  Pathology.     New  Series.— No.  IX. 


288  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

SIR   ROBERT    PEEL    AT   HARROW   AND    OXFORD. 

This  distinguifhed  statesman,  whose  name  is  indis?olubly  asso 
ciated  with  some  of  the  most  important  events  in  the  hi.-tory  of 
our  time,  was  born  in  1788,  in  a  cottage  adjoining  Chamber  Hall, 
his  father's  house,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Bury,  Lancashire, 
which  happened  at  that  time  to  be  under  repair.  He  descended 
from  the  ancient  family  of  De  Pele,  established  first  in  York 
shire,  and  afterward  in  Lancashire.  His  grandfather  com 
menced,  and  his  father  completed,  the  acqui.Mtion  of  a  large  for 
tune  as  a  cotton-spinner;  and,  as  if  "to  marshal  him  the  way 
that  he  was  goii  jr,"  Mr.  Peel,  the  father,  two  years  after  the 
birth  of  his  son  Robert,  entered  the  House  of  Commons  as  a 
member,  and  as  a  zealous  supporter  of  Mr.  Pitt:  in  1800  he 
received  a  baronetcy. 

The  son  was  sent  early  to  Hipperholme  School,  in  Yorkshire, 
where  he  cut  upon  a  block  of  stone  (now  preserved  at  Halifax) 
the  following  inscription : 

R.  PEEL. 

No  hostile  bands  ran  antedate  my  doom. 

He  was  removed  to  Harrow  School,  and  appears  in  the 
Speech  Hill  of  1803,  as  Peel,  sen.,  Upper-Fifth  Form,  No.  58. 
Lord  Byron,  his  school-fellow  (and  born  in  the  same  year), 
says  of  him: 

';  Peel,  the  orator  nnd  stntoman  (that  was,  or  if,  or  is  to  be),  wns  my  form-fellow,  and 
we  were  bo'h  at  the  fop  of  our  remove.  We  were  on  pood  terms,  but  his  bi  other  WHS  my 
intimate  1'iie.nd.  There  were  uhvajs  great  hopes  of  Feel  amorgst  us  all,  masters  nnd  schol 
ars — and  he  has  not  disappointed  them.  As  a  scholar,  he  was  greatly  my  superior  ;  as  a 
derlaimer  and  actor,  1  was  reckoned  at  least  his  equnl ;  as  a  M'hool-l>oy  t>\n  of  school,  I 
was  alwajs  in  scrapes,  and  lit  tifi-fr,  and  in  tcttoo  he  always  knew  his  lesson,  and  I 
rarely, -but  when  1  knew  it,  1  knew  it  nearly  as  well.  In  general  information,  history, 
etc.,  1  think  1  was  his  superior,  as  well  as  of  most  boys  of  my  standii  g."* 

He  was  (says  his  biographer,  Doubleday)  diligent,  studious, 
and  sagacious,  if  not  quick,  but  never  brilliant ;  preserving  a 
high  station  among  his  school-mates  by  exertion  and  persever 
ance  rather  than  genius ;  and  being  remarkable  for  prudent 
good  sen>e  rather  than  showy  talent. f  His  memory  is  fondly 
cherished  at  Harrow,  where  the  room  which  he  occupied  in  a 
house  in  the  town  is  kept  in  its  original  state,  with  a  brick  on 
which  he  cut  his  name,  the  genuineness  of  the  inscription 
beincr  verified  by  Peel's  handwriting  in  a  ciphering-book  of  the 
same  date.  His  name  is  also  cut  in  the  panel  of  the  old  school 
room,  with  those  of  his  three  sons,  whom  he  placed  in  the 
school. 

•For  an  anecdote  of  his  friendship  with  Lord  Pyron,  se«  page  291. 
t  Political  Life  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  1856,  vol.  i.  p.  42. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  289 

In  1804,  Peel  left  Harrow,  and  entered  Christchurch,  Oxford, 
as  a  gentleman  commoner.  At  the  University,  he  was  a  diligent 
and  laborious  student;  and  in  1808,  on  taking  his  degree,  ob 
tained  a  double  first-class,  the  highest  honors,  both  in  classics 
and  mathematics.  Amongst  his  competitors  were  Mr.  Gilbert, 
afterward  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University ;  Mr.  Hampden, 
Professor  of  Divinity ;  and  Mr.  Whately,  the  present  Archbish 
op  of  Dublin. 

A  boy  from  Tunbridge  School,  writing  to  one  of  his  former  class-fellows  an  account 
of  this  examination,  speaks  with  enthusiasm  of  the  spirit  of  Peel's  translations,  es 
pecially  of  his  beautiful  rendering  of  the  opening  of  the  second  book  of  Lucretius, 
beginning : 

Suave  mari  magno  turbantibus  sequora  ventis 
E  terra  magnum  alterius  spectare  laborem ; 

and  ending  with  the  picture  of  the  philosopher  gazing  from  his  calm  oriental  rest  on  the 
disturbed,  self- wearying,  ignorant,  erring  world.  "  Often  of  late,"  said  one  of  those  to 
whom  this  letter  at  the  time  was  read,  u  have  I  been  struck  with  the  fitness  of  this  passage 
to  Peel  himself,  who,  having  achieved  so  much  amidst  all  the  strife  of  party,  could,  free 
from  its  entanglements,  see  men  of  all  parties  gathering  the  ripening  fruit  of  his 
measures." 

Mr.  Doubleday  describes  Peel's  college  acquirements  as  "of 
the  solid  kind,  and  such  as  a  laborious  student  of  good  practical 
sagacity  may  always  acquire.  Of  wit,  or  imagination,  or  of  the 
inventive  faculty  in  general,  Mr.  Peel  had  little  ;  and  to  such 
men  the  absence  of  these  more  specious  qualifications  is  a  nega 
tive  advantage.  If  they  are  unable  to  dazzle  others,  in  the  same 
ratio  they  are  exempted  from  being  dazzled  by  them;  and  hence 
it  is  that  persons  so  qualified  have  a  clearer  view  of  the  charac 
ters  of  those  with  whom  they  have  to  deal,  and  are  better 
adapted  to  the  ordinary  business  of  life  than  their  more  accom 
plished  competitors." 

In  the  course  of  the  year  1808,  Mr.  Peel  completed  his 
studies  at  Oxford.  From  his  very  cradle,  it  may  be  said, 
he  was  destined  by  his  father  for  a  politician ;  and  in  1809, 
being  of  age,  he  entered  Parliament  for  the  borough  of 
Cashel. 

It  is  not  our  province  to  record  the  political  life  of  this  dis 
tinguished  man,  which  extended  beyond  forty  years.  More 
germane  is  it  in  this  place  to  glance  at  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  a 
patron  of  English  Literature  and  men  of  letters.  He  tendered  a 
baronetcy  t3  Southey,  and  conferred  on  him  a  pension  of  300£. 
a-year,  and  gave  the  same  amount  to  "Wordsworth ;  to  James 
Montgomery,  150J.  a-year;  and  to  Tytler,  to  Tennyson,  and 
M'Culloch,  each  200/.  a-year  ;  and  pensions  to  Frances  Browne, 
and  the  widow  of  Thomas  Hood.  To  him  Mrs.  Somerville  and 
Professor  Faraday  are  indebted  for  their  pensions ;  nor  should 
be  forgotten  his  friendship  with  Lawrence,  Wilkie,  and  Chan- 
19 


290  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

trey ;  his  patronage  of  Collins,  Roberts,  and  Stanfield ;  and  his 
prompt  relief  of  the  sufferings  of  Ha)  dun.* 

LORD    BYRON    AT    ABERDEEN,    HARROW,    AND    CAMBRIDGE. 

This  celebrated  man,  who,  as  a  poet  of  description  and  pas 
sion,  will  always  occupy  a  hi«ih  place,  was  horn  Jan.  22,  1788,  at 
No.  24,  in  Holies-street,  CavendUh-flquare,  and  was  christened 
in  the  small  parish  church  of  St.  Marylebone.  lie  was  the  only 
son  of  Captain  John  Byron,  of  the  Guards,  and  Catherine  Gordon, 
of  Gight,  an  Aherdeenshire  heiress.  Owing  to  an  accident  at 
tending  his  birth,  his  feet  were  distorted,  a  delect  which  was 
the  source  of  pain  and  mortification  to  him  duri?ig  the  whole 
of  his  life.  His  mother's  fortune  was  soon  squandered  by  her 
profligate  husband,  and  she  retired  to  the  city  of  Aberdeen,  to 
bring  up  her  son  on  a  reduced  income  of  about  130/.  per  annum. 
When  about  five  years  old,  Byron  was  sent  to  a  day^chool  at 
Aberdeen,  kept  by  one  Bowers,  and  remained  there  a  twelve 
month,  as  appears  by  the  following  entry  in  the  day-book  of  the 
school : 

"  George  Gordon  Byron, 
llnh  Novemlnr.    792 
19th  November,  1793.— Paid  one  guinea." 

Of  the  progress  of  his  learning  here,  and  at  other  places,  we 
have  the  following  record,  in  a  sort  of  a  journal  which  he  once 
began,  under  the  title  of  "My  Dictionary,"  and  which  is  pre 
served  in  one  of  his  manuscript  books : 

"  1  was  pent  at  five  years  old,  or  earlier,  to  a  Fcho^l  kept  by  a  Mr  Bowers,  who  waa 
called  Boflsy  Bnwers.  by  reason  of  his  dapperness.  It  wius  n  school  for  borh  sexes.  I 
learned  little  there  except  to  repeat,  by  rote  the  first  lesson,  of  monosyllables  ('  God  made 
man.'  'Let  us  love  him.'),  by  hearing  it  often  repeated,  without  acquiring  n  letter. 
Whenever  proof  was  made  of  my  progress  ;tt  home,  1  repeated  the;-e  words  wi;h  the  most 
rapid  flueney ;  but  on  turning  over  a  new  leaf.  I  continued  to  repeat  them,  so  that  the 
narrow  boundaries  of  my  first  gear's  accomplishments  were  deleted,  my  ears  boxe<! 
(which  they  did  not  deserve,  swing  that  it  was  only  by  ear  that  I  had  nrquiied  my  letters), 
and  my  intellects  consigned  to  a  new  preceptor  He  was  a  very  devout,  clever  li'tle  cler- 

fynian,  named  HOBS,  afterward  minister  of  one  of  the  Kirks  (En*t,  I  think).  Under  him 
made  astonishing  progress,  and  I  recollect  to  this  dav  his  mild  manners  and  jiood-na- 
tured  painstaking.  The  moment  I  could  read,  my  grand  passion  was  l.istvry;  ai.d  why,  I 
know  not,  but  1  was  particularly  taken  with  the  batMe  near  the  Lake  Hegillus  in  the  llo- 
r.irxn  History,  put  into  my  hands  the  first.  Four  jenr*  ago,  when  sfandii  g  on  the  heights 
Of  Tusculum,  and  looking  down  upon  the  little  round  lake  that  was  oi.ce  Kejiillus.  and 
which  dots  the  immense  expanse  below,  [  remembered  my  >oung  enfhiuiasm  and  my  old 
instructor.  Afterward  I  had  a  very  serious,  saturnine,  but  kind  young  man.  named  I'at- 
crson,  for  a  tutor.  He  was  the  son  of  my  shoemaker,  but  a  good  scholar,  as  is  common 
with  the  Scotch.  He  was  a  right  Presbyterian  also,  v  ith  him  I  began  l.a'in  in  Kuddt- 
man's  Grammar,  and  continued  till  I  went  to  the  grammar-school  (Scutiff,  '  Schule  ;' 
Abrr</<»iier, '  Squeel  '),  where  I  threaded  all  the  classed  to  the/curr/i,  when  I  was  recalled 
to  England  by  the  demise  of  my  uncle." 

In  one  of  his  Letters  he  says  of  his  writing : 

"I  acquired  this  handwriting,  which  Icin  hardly  read  myself,  under  the  fair  copies  of 
•  Notei  and  Queries,  No.  132. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  291 

Mr  Duncan,  of  the  same  cify  :  I  don't  think  he  could  plume  himself  much  upon  my  pro 
gress.  However,  1  wrote  much  better  than  1  have  ev.  r  dune  since.  Haste  and  agitation, 
of  one  kiud  or  another,  have  quito  spoilt  as  pretty  a  scrawl  as  ever  scratched  over  a 
frank." 

Byron's  early  religious  habits  were  fo-tered  by  his  nurse,  who 
taught  him  to  repeat  several  of  the  Psalms;  the  1st  and  23d 
being  among  the  earliest  that  he  committed  to  memory ;  and 
through  the  care  of  this  respectable  woman,  who  was  herself  of 
a  very  religious  disposition,  he  attained  a  far  earlier  and  more 
intimate  acquaintance  with  the  Sacred  Writings  than  falls  to  tho 
lot  of  most  young  people.  In  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Murray  from  Italy,  in  1821,  after  requesting  of  that  gentleman 
to  send  him,  by  the  first  opportunity,  a  Bible,  he  adds:  "•  Don't 
forget  this,  for  I  am  a  great  reader  and  admirer  of  those  books, 
and  had  read  them  through  and  through  before  I  was  eight 
years  old.  I  speak,  as  a  boy,  from  the  recollected  impression  of 
that  period  at,  Aberdeen  in  179G." 

It  was  about  1798  that  Byron  is  said  to  have  composed  his 
first  rhymes  upon  an  old  friend  of  his  mother's,  to  whom  he  had 
taken  a  dislike  ;  but  he  himself  tells  us  that  his  "  first  dash  into 
poetry"  was  in  1800,  when  he  "made  an  attempt  at  elegy — a 
very  dull  one."  On  Byron  succeeding  to  his  uncle's  title, 
his  mother  removed  with  him  to  the  family  seat,  Newstead 
Abbey,  in  Nottinghamshire ;  and  Mr.  Rogers,  a  schoolmaster  of 
Nottingham,  improved  him  considerably  by  reading  passages 
from  Virgil  and  Cicero  with  him  ;  but,  in  less  than  a  year,  he 
was  conveyed  to  a  quiet  boarding-school  at  Dulwich,  where  he 
remained  two  years  under  the  tuition  of  Dr.  Glennie.  Within 
the  next  two  years,  his  mother  removed  him  to  Harrow,  where 
he  remained  till  1805,  when  he  was  sent  to  Trinity  College,  Cam 
bridge.  At  Harrow,  he  was  an  irregular  and  turbulent  scholar, 
though  he  eagerly  devoured  all  sorts  of  learning  except  that 
which  was  prescribed  for  him :  his  talent  for  declamation  was 
the  only  one  by  which  he  was  particularly  distinguished:  he  had 
BO  aptitude  for  merely  verbal  scholarship ;  and  his  patience 
seemed  to  have  entirely  failed  him  in  the  study  of  Greek.  He 
frequently  gave  signs  of  a  frank,  noble,  and  generous  spirit, 
which  endeared  him  to  his  schoolmates,  of  which  Moore,  in  his 
Life  of  the  poet,  relates  the  following  instance: 

"  While  Lord  Byron  and  Mr.  Peel  were  at  Harrow  together,  a  tyrant  some  few  years 
older,  whose  name  was  *  *  *  *,  claimed  a  right  to  fag  little  I'eel,  which  claim 
(whether  rightly  or  wrongly.  I  know  not)  I'eel  resisted.  His  resistance,  however,  was  in 
vain  :  *  *  *  *  not  only  suhdued  him,  hut  determined  also  to  punish  the  refractory 
slave,  and  proceeded  forthwith  to  put  his  determination  in  practice,  by  inflicting  a  kind  of 
bastinado  on  the  inner  fleshy  side  of  the  bov's  arm,  which  during  the  operation,  was 
twisted  round  with  some  degrew  of  technical  skill,  to  r  nder  the  pain  more  acute.  U'hilo 
the  stripes  were  succeeding  each  other,  and  poor  I'eel  was  writhing  under  them,  Byron  savr 
and  felt  for  the  misery  of  his  friend ;  and  although  he  knew  he  was  not  strong  enough  to 
fight  *  *  *  *  with  any  hope  of  success,  and  that  ic  were  dangerous  eveu  to  approach 


292  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

him,  he  advanced  to  the  scene  of  action,  and  with  a  blush  of  rage,  tears  in  his  eypi,  and  » 
voice  trembling  between  terror  and  indignation,  ;i.-krd  Tory  humbly  if  *  *  *  *  would 
be  pleased  to  tell  him  how  many  stripes  he  meant  to  inflict?  'Why?'  returned  the 
executioner,  'you  little  rascal,  what  U  that  to  you?'  '  Because,  If  you  please,'  said  Byron, 
holding  out  his  arm,  '  I  would  take  half.'  " 

Upon  this,  Mr.  Moore  judiciously  remarks : 

41  There  is  a  mixture  of  simplicity  and  magnanimity  in  this  little  trait  whirh  is  truly 
heroic  ;  and,  however  we  may  smile  at  the  friendship  of  boy?,  it  Li  but  rarely  that  the 
friendship  of  manhood  is  capable  of  anything  half  so  generous." 

At  Harrow,  Byron  was  occasionally  serious  ;  and  he  would 
lie  by  the  hour  upon  an  altar-tomb  in  the  churchyard,  contem 
plating  the  glorious  prospect  from  that  elevated  site,  and  view 
ing  the  distant  metropolis  in  poetic  contrast  with  the  quiet 
beauty  of  the  surrounding  country :  the  monument  is  to  this 
day  culled  "Byron's  Tomb."*  His  vacations  were  generally 
passed  in  Nottinghamshire  :  one  of  them  was  spent  in  the  house 
of  the  Abbe*  Roufigny,  in  Took's-court,  Chancery-lane,  for  the 
purpose  of  studying  the  French  language,  but  most  of  his  time 
was  passed  in  boxing  and  fencing,  to  the  no  small  disturbance 
of  the  old  Abbess  establishment. 

"  Though  Byron  was  lame,"  says  one  of  his  Harrow  school 
fellows,  "  he  was  a  great  lover  of  sports,  and  preferred  hockey  to 
Horace,  relinquished  even  Helicon  for  Duck-puddle, f  and  gave 
up  the  best  poet  that  ever  wrote  hard  Latin  for  a  game  of  crick 
et  on  the  common.  He  was  not  remarkable  (nor  was  he  ever) 
for  his  learning ;  but  he  was  always  a  clever,  plain-spoken,  and 
undaunted  boy.  I  have  seen  him  fight  by  the  hour  like  a 
Trojan,  and  stand  up  against  the  disadvantage  of  his  lameness 
with  all  the  spirit  of  an  ancient  combatant.  *  Don't  you  remem 
ber  your  battle  with  Pitt  J (a  brewer's  son)  ?'  said  I  to 

him  in  a  letter  (for  I  had  witnessed  it) ;  but  it  seems  he  had  for 
gotten  it.  '  You  are  mistaken,  1  think,'  said  he,  in  reply ;  i  it 
must  have  been  with  Rice-pudding  Morgan,  or  Lord  Jocelyn,  or 
one  of  the  Douglases,  or  George  Raynsford,  or  Pryce  (with 
whom  I  had  two  conflicts),  or  with  Moses  Moore  ('the  clod'), 
or  with  somebody  else,  and  not  with  Pitt;  for  with  all  the  above- 
named  and  other  worthies  of  the  fist  had  I  an  interchange  of 
black  eyes  and  bloody  noses,  at  various  and  sundry  periods; 
however,  it  may  have  happened  for  all  that.'  " 

At  Cambridge,  by  fits  and  starts,  Byron  devoted  himself  to 
pretty  hard  study,  and  continued  to  cultivate  his  taste  for  poetry. 

*In  ft  letter  to  Mr.  Murray,  of  April,  1822,  Byron  says:  "^There  is  a  spot  in  the  church 
yard,  near  the  footpath,  on  the  brow  of  the  hill  looking  toward  Windsor,  and  a  tomb 
under  a  large  tree  (bearing  the  name  of  Peachie  or  Peachey),  where  I  u^ed  to  sit  for  hours 
and  hours  when  a  boy.  This  was  my  favorite  spot." 

t  See  Harrow  School,  described  at  page  93. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  293 

At  the  same  time  he  indulged  in  many  discreditable  eccentri 
cities,  and  caused  great  annoyance  by  keeping  a  bear  and  several 
bull-dogs.  He  frequently  evinced  the  most  generous  and  noble 
feelings,  and  chose  his  associates,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
from  among  the  young  men  of  the  greatest  ability,  wit,  and 
character,  to  a  few  of  whom  he  continued  much  attached  in 
after-life.  In  1806,  while  yet  at  college,  he  printed  a  thin 
quarto  volume  of  poems  for  private  circulation.  Next  year,  he 
brought  out  his  "Hours  of  Idleness,"  a  collection  of  fugitive 
poems,  which  was  treated  with  undue  severity  hy  the  Edinburgh 
Review;  upon  which  Byron  retaliated  in  his  biting  satire  of 
English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  published  in  1809,  a  few 
days  before  he  took  his  oath  and  seat  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
In  the  same  year  he  left  England  on  a  classical  tour  on  the 
Continent,  which  enriched  his  mind  with  incidents  and  poetical 
imagery,  and  filled  it  with  reflections  of  some  of  the  finest  and 
most  melancholy  scenery  in  the  world.  His  travels  finished  his 
poetical  education :  its  first-fruits  was  his  splendid  poem  of 
Childe  Harold,  commencing  a  long  trail  of  poetic  fame;  and  he 
continued  to  write  until  the  summer  of  1823,  when  he  joined 
with  ardor  and  impetuosity  in  the  cause  of  u  Greek  Independ 
ence  :"  and  early  in  the  following  year,  while  in  command  of  an 
expedition,  he  died,  three  months  after  he  had  reached  the  age 
of  thirty-six.  The  bitter  grief  of  his  followers  and  attendants 
of  all  nations  was  a  proof  of  his  kindness  of  heart,  and  his  good 
ness  as  a  master. 

THOMAS  ARNOLD  AT  WINCHESTER  AND  OXFORD. 

This  devoted  school  reformer  was  born  at  West  Cowes,  in 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  in  1795.  After  being  for  some  years  at  a 
private  school  in  Wilt-hire,  he  was  sent,  in  1897,  to  Winchester 
College,  where,  according  to  a  Rugbeian  writer  in  the  Quarterly 
Review,  who  well  remembers  him,  "  however  his  dormant  capa 
bilities  were  recognized  by  his  masters,  he  gave  to  his  school 
fellows  no  great  promise  of  a  future  excellence,  which  ripened 
slowly ;  but  even  then  he  showed  his  love  for  history  rather  than 
poetry,  and  for  truth  and  facts  in  preference  to  fiction.  Already 
in  his  school-boy  correspondence  did  he  inveigh  against  the 
incorrectness  and  exaggerations  of  the  Roman  historians ;  and 
thus  early  anticipate  the  views  of  Niebuhr."  Another  reviewer 
says: 

"  Along  with  the  elements  of  classical  learning,  and  a  strong  Wykehamist  feeling,  which 
he  ever  after  continued  to  cherish,  he  probably  acquired  at  Winchester  an  admimtion,  not 
without  prejudice,  for  public  education,  and  the  system  of  English  public  schools.  He 
afterward  became  distinguished,  and  sometimes  dreaded,  as  a  school  reformer  ;  but  hia 


294  School-Day*  of  Eminent  Men. 

anxiety  to  improve,  was  only  in  proportion  to  the  deprec  to  which  he  w.-ui  attached  to  the 
«>-8trm,  alike  by  the  ac !><x  hitions  of  hi-  UM  hood,  and  the  coutictions  of  his  more  mature 
experience  " — North  British.  Rentw,  No.  4. 

Arnold  went  to  Oxford  in  1811,  and  was  elected  as  a  scholar 
of  Corpus  Christi  College.  He  did  not  bring  with  him  any  pre 
cocious  amount  of  erudition ;  but  he  had  soon  so  mastered  the 
language  and  style  of  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  that  he  wrote 
narratives  in  the  manner  of  either,  to  the  admiration  at  least  of 
his  fellow-students.  He  devoted  himself  to  the  historians  and 
philosophers  of  antiquity,  rather  than  to  the  critical  and  verbal 
study  of  the  poets,  which  has  always  been  at  Oxford  the  favor 
ite  field  for  philosophical  training.  Among  his  fellow-students 
were  John  Keble,  author  of  the  Christian  Year,  and  John  Tay 
lor  Coleridge,  nephew  of  the  poet,  now  a  Judge  of  the  Queen's 
Bench  :  with  such  minds,  in  the  common  room  of  Corpus,  young 
Arnold  "debated  the  classic  and  romantic  question,"  and  "dis 
cussed  poetry  and  history,  logic  and  philosophy."  He  took  a 
high  degree,  gained  the  prose  prizes,  and  in  1815  obtained  a 
fellowship  of  Oriel,  then  reputed  to  be  the  blue  ribbon  of  the 
University.  Aristotle,  Herodotus,  and  Thucydides  formed  the 
studies  and  relaxations  of  his  maturing  life ;  and  on  them, 
coupled  with  the  Bible,  he  thought  the  knowledge  of  a  Christian 
was  the  best  based.  There  Arnold  acted  as  tutor;  and  among 
his  colleagues  were  Copleston,  Whately,  Keble,  Pusey,  New 
man,  and  other  celebrities  of  great  earnestness  and  intellectual 
activity.  He  was  naturally  self-confident;  and  his  independence 
of  opinion  and  dogmatism  offended  and  alarmed  many  members 
of  other  colleges ;  yet,  though  a  true  Christian  reformer,  what 
he  moj-t  desired  was  to  turn  the  capabilities  of  existing  institu 
tions  to  better  results,  to  repair  and  not  to  overthrow.  He  was 
virulently  misrepresented  and  opposed ;  but  he  pursued  his 
course  through  good  and  evil  report,  and  lived  down  calumny 
and  opposition ;  and  great  and  merited  was  his  triumph  when 
he  appeared  in  the  crowded  theatre  of  the  University  as  Pro 
fessor  of  History.  During  his  residence  at  the  University,  he 
availed  himself  largely  of  the  Oxford  libraries,  entering  upon  an 
extensive  course  of  reading,  especially  in  modern  history. 
Arnold  was  then,  and  continued  till  the  day  of  his  death,  an 
enthusiast  in  his  love  of  Oxford :  he  admired  its  system  of  tuition, 
its  learned  societies,  and  its  magnificent  libraries.  A  success 
ful  scholar  from  an  English  public  school,  he  became  a  distin 
guished  collegian:  with  his  opinions  and  friendships  formed  at 
college,  to  him  Oxford  was  a  world  in  itself;  he  loved  Oxford 
from  first  to  last. 

After  a  residence  of  nine  years,  he  removed  from  Oxford  to 


Anecdote  Biographies.  295 

Laleham,  married,  took  private  pupil?,  and  passed  another  nine 
years  peacefully  in  ripening  his  powers.  Thence  he  removed, 
in  1827,  to  the  head-mastership  of  Rugby,  where  his  profes 
sional  life  began,  as  we  have  already  illustrated.*  (See  ante, 
pages  92  and  (J3.) 

Arnold  threw  himself  into  his  great  work  of  school  reform. 

To  do  his  duty  to  the  utmost  was  the  height  of  his  ambition,  tho.«e  truly  English  Fenti- 
ments  by  which  Nelson  and  Wellington  were  inspired;  and  like  them  he  was  crowned  with 
victory,  for  soon  were  verified  the  predictions  of  the  Provost  of  Oriel,  that  he  would 
change  1 1  if  face  of  education  through  t/ie  public  school*  of  England.  lie  was  minded  — 
virluie  ojficii — to  combine  the  care  of  souls  to  that  of  the  intellects  of  the  rising  genera 
tion  and  to  realize  the  Scripture  iu  principle  aud  in  practice,  without  making  au  English 
school  a  college  of  .Jesuits. 

A  feeling  of  the  failings  and  shortcomings  of  our  public  schools— pointed  out  by  Cow- 

n-  and  others— had  long  been  working- among  the  thoughtful  and  serious,  when  Arnold 
the  way,  giving  shape  and  guidance  to  the  movement. 

His  principles  were  few:  the  fear  of  God  was  the  beginning  of  his  wisdom,  and  his  ob 
ject  was  not  so  much  to  teach  knowledge  as  the  means  of  acquiring  it ;  to  furnish,  in  a 
word,  the  key  to  the  temple.  He  desired  to  awaken  the  intellect  of  each  individual  boy, 
and  contended  that  the  main  movement  must  come  from  within,  and  not  from  without 
the  pupil ;  and  that  all  that  could  be.  should  be  done  by  him,  and  not  for  him.  In  a  word, 
his  scheme  was  to  call  forth  in  the  little  world  of  school  those  capabilities  which  best  be 
fitted  the  boy  for  his  career  in  the  great  one.  He  was  not  only  possessed  of  strength,  but 
had  the  art  of  imparting  it  to  others ;  he  had  the  power  to  grasp  a  subject  himself,  and 
then  engraft  it  on  the  intellects  of  others. —  Quarterly  Review,  No.  204. 

Especially  was  Arnold  an  orthodox  Oxonian  in  his  belief  of 
the  indispensable  usefulness  of  classical  learning,  not  only  as  an 
important  branch  of  knowledge,  but  as  the  substantial  basis  of 
education  itself,  the  importance  of  which  he  has  thus  forcibly 
illustrated : 

"  The  ?tudy  of  Greek  and  Latin,  considered  as  mere  languages,  is  of  importance  mainly 
as  it  enables  us  to  understand  and  employ  well  that  language  in  which  we  commonly 
think,  aud  speak,  and  write.  It  does  this  because  Greek  and  Latin  are  specimens  of  lan 
guage  at  once  highly  perfect  and  capable  of  being  understood  without  long  and  minute 
attention ;  the  ttudy  of  them,  therefore,  naturally  involves  that  of  the  general  principles 
of  grammar ;  while  their  peculiar  excellencies  illustrate  the  points  which  render  language 
clear,  and  forcible,  and  beautiful.  But  our  app'ication  of  this  general  knowledge  must  natur 
ally  be  to  our  own  languge;  to  show  uSjWhat  are  its  peculiarities,  what  its  beauties,  what  its 
defects ;  to  teach  us  by  the  patterns,  or  the  analogies  offered  by  other  languages,  how  the 
effect  we  admire  in  them  may  be  produced  with  a  somewhat  different  instrument.  Every  les 
son  in  Greek  or  Latin  may  and  ought  to  be  made  a  lesson  in  English ;  the  translation  of 
every  sentence  in  Demosthenes  or  Tacitus  is  properly  an  extemporaneous  English  compo 
sition  ;  a  problem,  how  to  express  with  equal  brevity,  clearness,  and  force,  in  our  own 
language,  the  thought  which  the  original  author  has  so  admirably  expressed  in  his."  t 

SIR    HENRY   HAVELOCK    AT    THE    CHARTER-HOUSE. 

To  the  notices  of  eminent  Carthusians,  at  page  104  of  the 
present  volume,  we  must  append  some  further  record  of  Have- 
lock,  who  took  so  noble  a  part  in  suppressing  the  Revolt  in  India 
in  1857,  and  who  so  heroically  rescued  the  garrison  of  Cawn- 
pore,  but,  within  a  few  days  of  his  victory,  sank  from  the  severe 

*  We  reiterate  our  recommendation  to  the  reader  to  turn  to  the  recently  published 
Tom  Brown's  S<-hool-<lays  for  many  a  delightful  picture  of  daily  life  aud  discipline  at 
Ilugby  during  Arnold's  mastership. 

t  Dr  Arnold  was  the  first  English  commentator  who  gave  life  to  the  study  of  the  clas 
sics,  by  bringing  the  facts  and  manners  which  they  disclose  to  the  test  of  real  life. 


296  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

effects  of  the  climate  and  the  war.  His  life  was  throughout  an 
eventful  career ;  strong  religious  principle  underlaid  his  whole 
character,  and  he  was  emphatically  pronounced  by  Lord  Har- 
dinge  to  be  "  every  inch  a  soldier,  and  every  inch  a  Christian." 

The  late  Henry  Havelock  was  the  son  of  William  Ilavelock, 
the  sicion  of  an  old  family  originally  seated  at  Great  Grimsby, 
in  Lincolnshire,  where  they  are  said  to  have  settled  in  the  time 
of  King  Alfred :  local  tradition  derives  their  descent  from 
Gu  thrum,  the  Danish  chief* — the  conquest  of  this  part  of  the 
island  by  the  Danes  having  been  complete. 

The  deceased  General  was,  however,  content  to  know  that  his 
parents  were  English,  and  traced  his  lineage  no  higher  than  to 
an  honest  family  which  resided  in  Lincolnshire.  William  Ilave 
lock,  his  father,  was  born  at  Guisborough,  in  Yorkshire,  made 
good  his  position  at  Sunderland,  and  then  married  Jane  Carter, 
daughter  of  a  conveyancer  of  that  town.  Henry,  their  illus 
trious  son,  was  born  at  Ford  Hall,  near  Sunderland,  in  1795. 
When  he  was  in  his  fifth  year,  his  father  immigrated  to  the 
south  of  England,  and  bought  Ingress,  at  Swanscombe,  in  Kent. 
In  his  sixth  year,  Henry  was  sent  with  his  elder  brother, 
William  (killed  in  the  cavalry  action  at  Ramnugger,  1843),  as 
a  parlor-boarder  to  a  school  at  Dartford,  kept  by  the  Rev.  J. 
Bradley,  with  whom  he  remained  about  three  years.  Courage 
and  presence  of  mind  are  indicated  in  the  incidents  related  of 
his  childhood.  He  falls  from  a  tree  in  Ingress  Park,  and  is 
asked  by  his  father  whether  he  was  not  frightened?  "No,"  is 
the  reply;  "I  was  thinking  about  the  bird's  eggs."  He  inter 
feres  in  a  fight,  to  secure  fair  play  for  a  school-fellow,  and  gets  a 
black  eye.  Called  to  give  an  account  of  the  disfigurement  to 
his  master,  he  is  silent,  and  takes  his  thrashing  like  a  man.  He 
was  already  an  earnest  reader  of  all  papers  which  came  in  his 
way  relating  to  military  affairs,  and  made  himself  familiar  with 
the  movements  of  Napoleon.  His  tendencies  toward  the  pro 
fession  of  a  soldier  were  so  strongly  evinced,  that  his  mother 
apprehended  disappointment  of  her  project  of  educating  him  for 
the  law. 

In  1804  he  left  Mr.  Bradley's  school  for  the  Charter-house, 
and  was  placed  in  the  boarding-house  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Matthew 
Raine,  then  head-master.  In  the  memoranda  which  Havelock 
has  left,  he  thus  speaks  of  his  school-fellows  :  "My  most  intimate 
friends  at  the  Charter-house  were  Samuel  Hinds,  William  N orris, 
and  Julius  Charles  Hare.  Hinds,  a  man  of  taste  and  a  poet, 
spent  his  early  years  in  traveling,  married  in  France,  distin 
guished  himself  in  one  of  the  colonial  assemblies  of  his  native 

•Mr.  John  Marshman,  in  the  Baptist  Magazine,  March,  1858. 


Anecdote  Biographies.  297 

island,  Barbadoes,  at  the  period  of  slave  emancipation,  and  died 
at  Bath  about  1847. 

"Norris,  now  Sir  William  Norris,  was  called  to  the  bar, 
appointed  successively  Advocate  Fiscal,  or  Queen's  Advocate, 
Puisne  Judge,  and  Chief-Justice  at  Ceylon,  and  subsequently 
Recorder  of  Penang.  Hare  went  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1812,  graduated  B.A.  1815,  and  subsequently  as  M.A., 
became  a  Fellow  and  Tutor  at  Trinity.  He  is  well  known  to 
the  literary  and  religious  world  by  his  joint  translation  with  Dr. 
Connop  Thirlwall  of  part  of  the  Roman  history  of  Niebuhr; 
some  volumes  of  sermons,  and  several  polemical  pamphlets. 

"Nearly  cotemporary  with  me  and  the  boys  just  named,  were 
Connop  Thirlwall,  now  Bishop  of  St.  David's ;  George  Wad- 
dington,  Dean  of  Durham,  distinguished  as  a  scholar  and  a  man 
of  letters  ;  George  Grote,  the  historian  of  Greece  ;  Archdeacon 
Hale,  now  Master  of  the  Charter-house  ;  Alderman  Thompson, 
the  member  for  Westmoreland  ;  Sir  William  MacNaghten,  the 
talented  but  unfortunate  envoy  to  Cabul ;  the  Right  Honorable 
Fox  Maule,  now  Secretary-of'-War ;  Eastlake,  the  painter ;  and 
Yates,  the  actor. 

"In  April,  1810,  Henry  Havelock  had  gone  up  into  that  fifth 
form,  of  which  Walpole,  grandson  of  Sir  Robert,  was  first,  Hare 
second,  John  Pindar  third,  and  Havelock  fourth.  It  consisted 
of  some  thirty  boys,  and  lower  down  in  it  were  Connop  Thirlwall 
and  Hinds." 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Brock*  says  :  "  Not  merely  thoughtful  was  the 
young  Carthusian  as  a  school-boy.  He  was  religiously  if  not 
evangelically  thoughtful.  Thus,  in  his  memoranda,  he  says: 
'  Of  Henry  Havelock  it  may  be  recorded,  that  there  were  early 
indications  of  the  strivings  of  the  good  Spirit  of  God  in  his  soul, 
though  Satan  and  the  world  were  permitted  for  many  years  to 
triumph.'  Certainly,  whilst  at  the  Charter-house  the  evidence 
of  those  strivings  was  apparent.  'Methodist'  was  one  current 
taunt;  'canting  hypocrite*  was  another  for  any  youngster  who 
would  dare  to  acknowledge  God.  However,  he,  with  several 
others,  as  eminent  in  their  several  professions  afterward  as  he 
was  in  his,  outbraved  the  taunt.  Without  being  ostentatious, 
they  were  faithful  to  their  convictions,  and  regularly  met  in  one 
of  the  sleeping-rooms  of  the  Charter-house  for  religious  pur 
poses.  Sermons  were  read  by  them  with  one  another,  and  con 
versations  ensued  upon  the  reading,  as  to  the  bearing  of  the 
truth  upon  their  own  character  and  conduct;  and  'Old  Phlos' 
became  more  and  more  grounded  and  settled  in  his  resolution  to 
fear  God." 

*In  his  Biographical  Sketch  of  Sir  Henry  Hayclock,  K.C.B.     Third  Edition.    1868. 


298  School-Days  of  Eminent  Men. 

Yet,  Ilavelock's  fear  of  God  was  neither  doleful  nor  dismal : 
he  could  cultivate  tha',  and  read  Greek  and  Latin  with  any  of 
his  associates  :  "he  could  search  the  Scriptures  and  pray  to  God, 
and  yet  do  anything  that  it  was  manly  or  virtuous  to  do,  either 
in  the  play -ground  or  elsewhere.  And  there  was  nothing  manly 
or  virtuous  that  he  was  not  all  the  more  ready  to  do  because  in 
simplicity  and  godly  sincerity  he  walked  with  God.  As  with  so 
many  others,  the  religious  impressions  of  Havelock  were  trace 
able  to  the  influence  and  efforts  of  his  mother  when  he  was  a 
little  boy.  It  was  her  custom  to  assemble  her  children  for  read 
ing  the  Scriptures  and  prayer  in  her  own  room.  Henry  was 
always  of  the  party  whenever  he  was  at  home,  and  in  course  of 
time  he  was  expected  to  take  the  reading,  which  he  generally 
did.  It  impressed  him  ;  and  under  these  pleasant  circumstances 
he  knew,  like  Timothy,  the  Holy  Scriptures  from  a  child." 

Under  Dr.  Raine,  Ilavelock  mastered  the  Greek  and  Latin 
classics,  and  throughout  his  after-life,  as  opportunity  offered,  he 
took  great  delight  in  keeping  up  his  acquaintance  with  the  great 
models  of  antiquity,  the  effect  of  which  may  be  traced  in  the 
perspicuity  and  vigor  of  his  own  style.  In  1811,  Ilavelock 
reached  the  sixth  form  ;  in  August,  the  learned  and  accomplished 
Dr.  Raine  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  Dr.  Russell ;  in  December 
following,  Ilavelock  quitted  the  Charter-house.* 

Ilavelock  had  now  a  profession  to  choose,  and  he  was  advised 
to  enter  as  a  student  at  one  of  the  inns  of  court,  with  the  view 
of  preparing  for  the  law.  In  1814,  accordingly,  he  became  a 
pupil  of  the  celebrated  special  pleader,  Chitty,  and  there  formed 
an  intimacy  with  his  fellow-student,  afterward  Sir  Thomas  Tal- 
fourd.  Mr.  Marshman  relates,  such  was  their  congeniality  of 
habits,  that  when  they  left  the  chambers  of  Chitty,  they  beguiled 
many  an  hour  in  walking  on  Westminster  Bridge;  "but  their 
conversation  was  of  other  matters  than  the  pleas  of  the  Crown, 
and  turned  much  oftener  on  the  beauties  of  poetry  than  upon 
the  contents  of  musty  parchments.  Ilavelock  used  to  observe 
in  after-life  that  the  last  •  time  they  took  their  stroll  on 
the  bridge,  when  he  was  about  to  embrace  the  military 
profession,  Talfourd  noticed  the  placid  progress  of  the  stream 

*  He  was  one  of  the  most  quiet  boys  in  the  school.  At  the  recent  meeting  of  the  Liver 
pool  Collegiate  Institution,  Mr.  Gladstone  remarked  that  Ilavelock's  case  disproved  the 
vulgar  notion  that  there  is  a  natural  antagonism  between  corporeal  aad  mental  excellence, 
ana  that  those  who  are  fond  of  manly  sports  are  rarely  good  scholars.  Thus,  Havelock, 
when  at  the  Charter  -house,  "  used  to  stand  looking  on  while  others  played,  and  his  gen 
eral  meditative  manner  procured  for  him  the  name  of  '  Philosopher,'  hub-cquently  dimin 
ished  to  'Old  I'hlos'— "yet,"  added  Mr.  Gladstone,  "he  is  now  distinj;ui>l.ii)j;  himself  by 
a  temper,  a  courage,  an  activity,  a  zeal,  a  com-istency,  and  a  dogged  and  dauntless  resolu 
tion,  equal  at  least  to  any  that  England  has  j  reduced  this  century. :) 


Anecdote  Biographies.  299 

under    the    arches,   and   repeated   with    ecstacy   that   line   of 
Wordsworth — 

"The  river  glideth  at  its  own  sweet  will." 

But  the  law  was  not  the  sphere  for  a  man  of  Havelock's  tem 
perament.  The  tastes  of  his  family  were  military  :  his  brother 
William,  described  by  Napier  as  "one  of  the  most  chivalrous 
officers  in  the  service"  during  the  Peninsular  war,  obtained  for 
Henry  a  commission,  in  1815. 

"Under  these  circumstances,"  says  the  Rev.  Mr.  Brock, 
"Havelock's  destination  in  life  was  changed  and  definitely 
fixed.  He  saw  an  opportunity  of  making  his  way  honorably,  of 
which,  through  the  reverses  in  his  family  fortunes,  he  felt  bound 
to  take  advantage ;  and  having  no  scruples  about  the  compati 
bility  of  war  with  Christianity,  he  became  a  soldier.  He 
exchanged  the  pen  for  the  sword.  Instead  of  giving  himself  up 
to  Blackstone,  he  took  up  Vattel  for  careful  study.  When  he 
would  have  had  to  devote  attention  to  'cases,'  he  came  to  write 
'dispatches.'  For  a  Generalship  rather  than  for  a  Judgeship 
was  he  henceforward  a  competitor.  His  fello\v-student  at 
special  pleading  rose  to  be  Mr.  Justice  Talfourd,  of  the  Com 
mon  Pleas.  He  rose  to  be  gazetted  as  Sir  Henry  Havelock,  of 
Lucknow."  * 

He  had  resolved  to  go  to  India,  whither  he  proceeded  in  1823 ; 
here  he  was  soon  recognized  as  a  man  who  would  do  what  was 
right,  and  feared  nothing.  Havelock  was  accustomed  to  regard 
his  transference  to  India  as  the  most  critical  epoch  of  his  exist 
ence  ;  and  the  reason  is  thus  recorded  in  his  own  memoranda — 
in  which  he  is  never  mentioned  but  in  the  third  person : 

"A  far  more  important  event,  as  regarded  the  interests  of  the 
writer,  ought  to  have  been  recorded  whilst  narrating  the  events 
of  1823,  for  it  was  while  he  was  sailing  across  the  wide  Atlantic 
toward  Bengal  that  the  spirit  of  God  came  to  him  with  its  offers 
of  peace  and  mandate  of  love,  which,  though  for  some  time 
resisted,  were  received,  and  at  length  prevailed.  There  was 
wrought  that  great  change  in  his  soul  which  has  been  productive 
of  unspeakable  advantage  to  him  in  time,  and  he  trusts  has 
secured  him  happiness  through  eternity." 

*  "  Not  to  be  overlooked,"  says  the  Rev.  Mr.  llrock,  "  is  the  memorable  death  of  the  two 
men  so  many  years  afterward  ;  the  one  on  the  bench  at  Stafford,  whilst  right  eloquently 
pleading  for  greater  sympathy  between  rich  and  poor;  the  other  in  camp  at  Lucknow, 
exhausted  by  his  exertions  for  relieving  helpless  women  and  children  from  disgrace  and 
death."— Biographical  Sketch,  ptige  17. 


APPENDIX. 


UNIVERSITY  HONORS. 

DURING  the  printing  of  this  volume,  the  Author's  atten 
tion  was  drawn  to  a  very  able  and  interesting  inquiry,  in 
the  Journal  of  Psychological  and  Mental  Pathology,  New  Series, 
No.  IX. — January,  1858.  This  paper,  entitled  "Body  and 
Mind,"  is  from  the  pen  of  the  Editor,  Dr.  Forbes  Winslow,  by 
whose  permission  is  reprinted  the  following  important  Return, 
made  in  order  to  correct  the  very  prevalent  mistake  in  supposing 
that  men  who  have  attained  great  distinction  and  high  honors  at 
our  two  English  Universities,  do  not,  in  after-life,  occupy  the 
most  eminent  positions  at  the  Bar,  on  the  Bench,  and  in  the 
Senate.  First,  as  to 

OXFORD. — Earl  of  Eldon,  English  Prize  Essay,  1771 ;  Lord  Tenterden  (Lord  Chief  Jus 
tice  of  the  King's  Bench),  English  Essay,  1786,  Latin  verse,  1784;  Sir  W.  E.  Taunton 
(Judge  in  Court  of  King's  Bench),  English  Essay,  1793  ;  J.  Phillimore  (Professor  of  Civil 
Law),  English  Essay,  1798  ;  Sir  C.  E  Gray  (Chief  Justice  of  Bengal),  English  Essay,  1808  ; 
Sir  J.  T.  Coleridge  (Judge  in  Court  of  Queen's  Bench),  English  Essay,  1813,  Latin  verse, 
1810,  Latin  Essay,  1813,  1st  class  Classics,  1812;  Herman  Merivale  (Professor  of  Political 
Economy),  English  Essay,  1830,  1st  class  Classics,  1827  :  Roundell  Palmer  (Deputy  Stew 
ard  of  the  University),  Latin  Essay,  1835,  Latin  verse,  1831,  English  verse,  1832,  1st  class 
Classics,  1834 ;  Lord  Colchester,  Latin  verse,  1777  ;  Sir  J.  Richardson  (Judge  in  Common 
Pleas),  Latin  verse,  1792;  Sir  Christopher  Puller  (Chief  Justice  at  Calcutta),  Latin  verse, 
1794;  G.  K.  Rickards  (Professor  of  Political  Economy),  English  verse,  1830,  2d  class 
Classics,  1833  ;  Nassau  W.  Senior  (Professor  of  Political  Economy),  1st  class  Classics,  1811 ; 
Sir  Richard  Bethell  (Attorney-General,  University  Counsel),  1st  class  Classics,  1818;  Hon 
orable  J.  C.  Talbot  (Deputy  High  Steward),  1st  class  Classics,  1825  ;  Travers  Twiss  (Regius 
Professor  of  Civil  Law),  2d  class  Classics,  1830. 

CAMBRIDGE. — Sir  F.  Maseres  (Baron,  Exchequer),  4th  Wrangler,  1752,  Senior  Medalist : 
Sir  Elijah  Impey  (Chief  Justice,  Fort  Willhm,  Bengal),  2d  Senior  Optime,  1756,  Junior 
Medalist;  Sir  J  Wilson  (Judge,  Common  Pleas),  Senior  Wrangler,  J761 ;  Lord  Alvanley 
(Chief  Justice,  Common  Pleas),  12th  Wrangler,  1766 ;  the  late  Lord  Ellenborough  (Chief 
Justice,  King's  Bench),  3d  Wrangler,  1771,  Senior  Medalist;  Sir  S.  Lawrence  (Judge, 
Common  Pleas),  7th  Wrangler,  1771 ;  Sir  II.  Russell  (Judge  in  India),  4th  Senior  Optime, 
1772;  the  late  Lord  Manners  (Chancellor  of  Ireland),  5th  Wrangler,  1777;  Chief  Justice 
Warren,  of  Chester,  9th  Wrangler,  1735 ;  the  late  John  Bell,  Senior  Wrangler,  1786,  Senior 
Smith's  Prizeman  :  Sir  J  Littledale  (Judge  in  Court  of  Queen's  Bench),  Senior  Wrangler. 
1787,  Senior  Smith's  Prizeman ;  Lord  Lyndhurst  (late  Lord  Chancellor),  2d  Wrangler, 
1794,  Junior  Smith's  Prizeman  ;  Sir  John  Beckett  (Judge  Advocate),  5th  Wrangler,  1795  : 
the  late  Sir  John  Williams  (Judge,  Queen's  Bench),  18th  Senior  Optime,  1798  ;  the  late  Sir 
N.  C.  Tindal  (Chief  Justice,  Common  Pleas),  8th  Wrangler,  1799,  Senior  Medalist ;  the  late 
Sir  L.  Shadwell  (Vice-Chancellor  of  England),  7th  .Wrangler,  1800,  Junior  Medalist; 
Starkie  (Downing  Professor  of  Law,  University  Counsel),  Senior  Wrangler,  1803,  Senior 
Smith's  Prizeman ;  Lord  Wensleydale,  5th  Wrangler,  1803,  Senior  Medalist ;  the  late  Sir 


302  Appendix. 

T.  CoUman  (Judge,  Common  Picas),  13fh  Wrangler.  1803;  Lord  Chief  Baron  Pollock, 
Senior  Wrangler,  1806,  Senior  Smith's  Pri/eman  ;  Lord  I>angdale,  Senior  \\' rangier.  1HOS, 
Senior  Smith's  Prizeman  ;  the  late  Huron  Alderson,  Senior  Wrangler,  1809.  Senior  Smith's 
Prizeman  and  Senior  Medalist ;  Sir  W.  H.  Maule  (Judge.  Common  Plea*).  Senior  Wran 
gler,  810,  Senior  Smith's  Pi izeman  ;  Baron  Platt  (Exchequer),  fjth  Junior  Optime,  810; 
Chambers  (Judge  of  Supreme  '  ourt.  Kombay).  6th  Wrangler,  181 1  ;  Lord  CramvorMi.  17th 
Wrangler,  1812;  Mirehousc  (Author  of  Law  of  Tithes,  and  Common  Serjeant  ol  City  of 
London),  13Ui  Senior  Optime,  1812;  Sir  J.  Komilly  (Downinir  Professor  of  Law.  and  Pro 
fessor  of  Law,  University  College,  London),  4th  Wrangler,  1813;  Vice-Chancel  lor  Kindera- 
ley,4th  Wrangler,  1814';  Sir  B  II.  Malkin  (Chief  Justice  of  Prince  of  Wules's  Island),  3d 
Wrangler,  1818;  Lord  Justice  Turner.  9th  Wrangler,  1819:  the  late  II.  C.  Hildvard 
(Queen's  Counsel),  12th  Senior  Optime.  1823;  Mr.  John  Cowling.  Q.C.,  M.P.  (Uni 
versity  Counsel,  and  Deputy  High  Steward),  Senior  Wrangler,  1824,  Senior  Smith's  Prize 
man  ;  Vice-Chancellor  Wood  24th  Wrangler,  1824:  Vice-Chancellor  Parker,  7th  Wran 
gler,  182-i;  Mr.  Loftu*  T.  \Vignim,  Q.C.  (M.P.  for  University),  8th  Wrangler,  1825; 
Chief  Justice  Martiii  (New  Zealand),  26th  Wrangler,  1829,  3d  in  1st  class  ClasMcs,  and 
Junior  Medalist. 

DUBLIN  —"795.  Sir  T.  Lefroy  (Chief  Justice  of  Queen's  Bench),  gold  mrdal  ;  ""800,  Sir  J. 
L.  Foster  (Judge,  Common  Pleas,  M.P.  for  University,  1807),  gold  medal  ;  1802,  P  C. 
Crampfon  (Queen's  Count*!,  Judge,  Qu«-tirs  Bench),  gold  medal;  1803.  F.  Blacklmrne 
(Ix>rd  Chancellor  of  Ireland),  gold  medal;  1811,  K.  II  Greene  (Biiron  of  Exchequer),  gold 
medal ;  1623,  J.  II  Monahtm  (Chief  Justice,  Common  Pleas),  gold  medal. 

TRIPOS. 

The  original  Tripos,  from  which  the  Cambridge  class  lists  have 
derived  their  names,  was  a  three  legged  stool,  on  which,  on  Ash- 
Wednesday,  a  bachelor  of  one  or  two  years'  standing  (called 
therefrom  the  Bachelor  of  the  Stool)  used  formerly  to  take  his 
seat,  and  play  tiie  part  of  a  public  disputant  in  the  quaint  pro 
ceedings  which  accompanied  admission  to  the  degree  of  B.A.  In 
course  of  time,  the  name  was  transferred  from  the  stool  to  him 
that  sat  on  it, and  the  disputant  was  called  the  Tripos;  thence  it 
passed  to  the  day  wlu-n  the  stool  became  a  post  of  honor ;  then 
to  the  lists  published  on  that  day,  containing  the  seniority  of 
commencing  B.A.'s  arranged  according  to  the  pleasure  of  the 
Proctors  ;  and,  ultimately,  it  obtained  the  enlarged  meaning  now 
universally  recognized,  according  to  which  it  stands  for  the 
examination,  whether  in  mathematics,  classics,  moral  or  physical 
science,  as  well  as  for  the  list  by  which  the  result  of  that  exami 
nation  is  made  known. — Notes  and  Queries,  No.  117. 

ST.  PAUL'S  SCHOOL  FOUNDED.  (Pages  48,  49.) 

Among  \\iejasciculi  of  Commemoration  Addresses  recited  in 
praise  of  Dean  Colet,  the  Founder  of  St.  Paul's  School,  are 
entitled  to  special  mention,  "The  number  of  the  Fish,"  a  lay,  by 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Kynaston,  the  High  Muster,  illustrating  Colet's 
prescribed  number  of  scholars :  "  There  shall  be  taught  in  the 
fichole  children  of  all  nations  indifferently,  to  the  number  of 
CLIII." — Statutes.  Another  of  the  learned  High  Master's  Com 
memorations  is  entitled  fpsum  Auditc — ullear  ye  Him  ;"  Ilym- 
nus  Gratulatorius  super  Fundatione  D.  Pauli  Scholac.  In  Latin 
and  English  Trochaic  Verse,  with  Notes  and  Preface.  Appo 
sition,  1857. 


Appendix.  803 

The  epigraph  to  this  Hymn  of  Gratulation  is  as  follows : 

"Supra  cathedram  pracceptoris  sedet  puer  Jesus  singular! 
opere,  docentis  gestu  ;  quern  totus  grex,  adiens  scholam  ac  re- 
linquens,  hymno  salutat.  Et  imm  net  Patris  facies  dieentis, 
Ipsum  audite :  nam  haec  verba  me  auctore  adscripsit." — Erasmi 
Epistolce. 

"  Over  the  master's  chair  is  set  an  image  of  the  child  Jesus, 
of  admirable  work,  in  the  attitude  of  teaching;  whom  all  the  boys, 
on  entering  and  leaving,  salute  with  a  h}mn.  And  there  is  a 
representation  of  the  Father,  saying,  Hear  ye  Him:  the-e  words 
he  added  by  my  advice." — Letter  of  Erasmus  on  the  Founding 
of  St.  Pauls  School. 

Of  St.  Paul's,  Knight,  in  his  Life  of  Colet,  states:  "This  noble 
impulse  of  Christian  charity,  in  the  founding  of  Grammar-schools, 
was  one  of  the  providential  ways  and  means  for  bringing  about 
the  blessed  Reformation ;  and  it  is  therefore  observable,  that 
within  thirty  years  before  it,  there  were  more  Grammar-schools 
erected  and  endowed  in  England,  than  had  been  in  three  hun 
dred  years  preceding." 

Among  the  memorable  things  said  of  eminent  Paulines  is 
Archdeacon  Tennisou's  tribute,  in  his  Sermons  preached  before 
the  scholars — to  John,  Duke  of  Marlborough,  "  who  never  be 
sieged  a  town  which  he  did  not  take,  nor  fought  a  battle  which 
he  did  not  win." 

"  But  for  St.  Paul's  School,"  said  Lord  John  Russell,  at  the 
Apposition  Banquet,  1846,  "  Milton's  harp  would  have  been 
mute  and  inglorious,  and  Marlborough's  sworl  might  have 
rusted  in  its  scabbard." 


GENERAL   INDEX. 


ABBOTT,  GEORGE,  Archbishop  of  Canter 
bury.  163. 

Addison  at  Lichfield,  Charter-house,  and 
Oxford,  196;  memories  of,  196;  Steele 
and  Arbuthnot,  132,  133. 

Aldgate  Free  Schools,  133 

Alfred,  birth  of,  7;  education  of.  7;  schools 
of,  8. 

"Anatomy  of  Melancholy,"  the  author  of, 
100. 

Angers,  Arthur  Wellesley  at,  258. 

Anglo-Norman  :-chools,  rise  of,  21. 

Anglo-Saxon  Schools,  rise  of,  6. 

Anne,  literature  in  the  ruign  of,  132. 

Arbuthnot,  his  sound  English,  133. 

Archery,  origin  of,  9,  10. 

Arnold,  Dr.  ihouias,  his  college  associate?, 
294;  head-master  of  Rugby,  92;  at  Ox 
ford,  294  ;  his  love  of  Oxford,  294  ;  his 
school  reform,  295  ;  at  Winchester,  293. 

Arrow,  Silver,  shooting  for,  at  Harrow,  95. 

Ascham,  tutor  to  Lady  Jane  Grey,  78;  his 
<l  Schoolmaster,"  77;  tutor  to  Queen  Eli 
zabeth,  17. f 

Aubrey,  John,  schools  in  his  times,  115 ;  his 
schools  in  Wiltshire.  175 

Augustan  ag«  of  literature,  132. 

Autobiographists,  female,  126 

Autograph  of  Dry  den  at  Westminster  School, 
181. 

Bacon,  Lord,  ah  Cambridge,  161 ;  influence 

of  his  writings,  115.  116. 
Bacon,  Roger,  educational  reformer,  26. 
Baker's  Chronicle,  110. 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  boots  forbidden  to 

be  worn  at,  273. 
Banks.  Sir  Joseph,  at  Harrow.  Eton,  and 

Oxford,  231 ;  how  he  learnt  botany,  232. 
Barrow,  Isaac,  at  Charter-house,  179. 
Bartholomew,  faint,  Schools,  and  the  silver 

arrow,  59 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  educated,  89. 
Bede,  "the  Wise  Saxon,"  6. 
Bedford  Free  Grammar  School,  74. 
Bell  and  Lancaster,  system  of,  139. 
Benefit  of  Clergy,  22. 
Bible,  the,  and  Edward  VI.,  67 ;  translated 

by  W'ickliffe,  33 ;    new  translation  of,  by 

order  of  James  I.  97. 
Birmingham  Free  Grammar  School,  73. 
Blake,  admiral,  at  Bridgwater  and  Oxford, 

166. 
Blake,  William,  and  the  first  Charity  School, 

I'll. 
Bloomfield,   Robert,   his   "Farmer's  Boy," 

253. 

Blues,  eminent,  71. 
Boating  at  Westminster  and  Eton,  £5. 
Bolingbroke,  Lord,  133. 

20 


Books,  the  earliest,  11;  early  printed,  53; 
scarce  at  Oxford,  42 

Boyer  and  Field,  masters  at  Christ's  Hospi 
tal,  276. 

Boyle,  the  Hon.  Robert,  his  education  and 
love  of  science,  176. 

Bradgate,  Lady  Jane  Grey  at,  78. 

Brindley,  how  he  taught  himself  mechanic*, 

British  games,  earlv,  1.  ^», 

British  Museum  established,  134,  135. 

Britons,  early  education  of,  1. 

Brougham,  Lord,  education  of,  146  ;  on  Pub 
lic  Education,  146. 

Buchanan,  tutor  to  James  I.,  96. 

Bunyan,  John,  his  school,  boyhood,  and  fa 
vorite  books.  177,  178,  179. 

Burke,  Edmund,  at  Ballitore  and  Dublin. 
223,  224  ;  his  favorite  authors,  225  ;  and 
the  Shackletons,  224. 

Burleigh,  Lord,  at  Cambridge,  153  ;  his  edu 
cation,  89  ;  his  plan  of  study,  154. 

Burns,  Robert.  "  the  Ayrshire  plowman," 
243 ;  instructed -by  his  father,  244 ;  his  love 
of  reading,  243;  his  teacher,  Murdoch, 
'.  45. 

Burton,  Robert,  education  of,  101. 

Busby,  Dr  ,  his  discipline  at  Westminster, 
168  ;  education  at  Westminster  and  Ox 
ford,  167.  168;  head-master  of  West 
minster  School,  84. 

Butler.  Samuel,  at  Worcester  and  Cam 
bridge,  1 71. 

Bryon,  Lord,  his  autobiography,  290 ;  at 
Cambridge,  2'Jl ;  his  early  religious  habits. 
291 ;  his  first  verses,  291 ;  his  lameness', 
290 ;  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  at  Harrow,  29  i ; 
"Byron's  tomb,"  292. 

Cambridge,  the  sciences  at,  119. 

Cambridge  University,  fare  in  1550,  156. 

Cambridge  University,  rise  of,  24. 

Camden  and  Ben  Jonson,  155. 

Camden  at  Christ's  Hospital  and  West 
minster,  155- 

Camden,  Lord,  at  Eton  and  Cambridge.  213. 

Canning,  George,  his  literary  tastes,  261 ;  at 
Eton  and  Oxford,  260,  261. 

Canterbury  Schools,  seventh  century,  5. 

Canute,  King-,  a  poet,  11. 

Carew,  Sir  Peter,  a  truant,  80. 

Carpenter,  John,  and  the  City  of  London 
School,  47. 

Carthusians,  eminent,  104. 

Caxton,  the  first  English  printer,  education 
in  his  time,  150. 

Charity  Schools,  rise  of,  126. 

Charles  I.,  his  accomplishment*,  105;  edu 
cation  of.  104:  literature  in  his  reign, 
106. 


306 


General  Index. 


Charles  TT    incorporates  the  Royal  Society, 

122 ;  Mathematical  School,  Christ's  Hos- 

pital,  122  ;    his  patronage  of  letters,  121 ; 

visits  Westminster  School,  84 
Charter  of  the  Rox  al  Society,  122. 
Charter-house  Poor  Brethren,  104. 
Charter-house  School  founded,  102. 
Chatham,  Lord,  at  Eton  and  Oxford,  207. 
Chaucer,  schools  in  the  age  of.  29. 
Chelsea,  Arthur  Wellesley  at,  266. 
Chelsea,  Sir  Thomas  More  at,  62. 
(  heUea  College  founded,  97. 
Chivalrous  education,  system  of,  55- 
Christ's  Hospital  buildings,  70  ;  founded  by 

Edward    VI.,  68;    Five-and-thirty  years 

ago,  by  C  Lamb,  275.  270. 
Church  schools,  early,  22. 
Churches,  schools  in,  39 
Clarendon,  Lord,  education  of,  100  ;  at  Ox 
ford  and  the  Temple,  169.  170. 
Clarendon  Press,  Oxford,  established,  133. 
Clerk,  or  "  Clericus,"  4. 
Clergy,  benefit  of,  22 
Clergy,  education  of  the,  4. 
Clive,  Lord,    his  daring  boyhood,  220 ;   at 

Madras,  220. 

"  Cocker's  Arithmetic/'  119. 
Coke,   Sir  Edward,  education  of,  156;    his 

legal  studies,  15 •>. 
Coleridge,    Samuel  Taylor,   at  Cambridge, 

270  ;  at  Christ's  Hospital,  269  ;  a  gluttou 

of  books,  270 

Colet,  Dean,  founds  St.  Paul's  School,  49. 
Collins,  William,  poet,  at  Winchester  and 

Oxford,  218,  219 
Colleges,  object  of.  46- 
Comines,  Puilip  de,  his  character  of  Henry 

VII.,  69. 

Conveyancing,  Anglo-Saxon,  4. 
Cook,  Sir  Anthony,  and  his   four   learned 

daughters,  79. 
Cook,  Captain,  education  of  on  board  ship, 

221. 
"  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  the,  by  Burns, 

246 
Cowley,  "Of  Myself,'1  173;  at  Westminster, 

172. 
Cowper  at  Market-street  and  Westminster, 

226  ;  his  recollections  of  the  play -ground, 

227. 

Cranmer.  boyhood  of.  65 ;  godfather  to  Ed 
ward  VI.,  66. 
Crichton,  the  Admirable,  at  Edinburgh,  and 

his  career,  89,  161,  162. 
"Criss-cross  How,  the,"  i43. 
Ctofte,  Sir  K..  tutor  of  Edward  VI.,  51. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  boyhood  and  education, 

120  ;  at  Cambridge,  i20  ;  at  Huntingdon. 

120 

Croyland  Abbey,  ruins,  schools,  etc.,  17. 
Curll  castigated  by  the  \\estni5nster  boys, 

185. 
Curtain  tradition  at  Westminster  School,  83. 

Danes,  the  destroyers  of  learning,  11. 

Davy,  or  Davic.  Ad;un,  28. 

Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  his  amusements,  277; 
hi*  childhood,  277;  obtains  hi'at  from  ice, 
279  ;  at  Penzance,  277  ;  .  poetry,  278 ; 
safety-lamp,  281 ;  studies,  287  ;  in  medi 
cine  and  chemistry,  280;  President  of  the 
Koyal  Society,  281 ;  at  the  Royal  Institu 
tion,  281. 


Defoe  at  Stoke  Newingfon,  123. 

Disputations  of  the  Anglo-Norman  school", 
2i. 

Drayton,  Michael,  education  of,  89. 

Druids,  schools  of  the,  2  ;  their  system,  2. 

Dryden's  cut  autograph  at  Westminster.  84  ; 
his  studies  and  works,  181  :  at  Tic hmarsh, 
Westminster,  and  <  ambridge,  180. 

"  Dulce  I  inn  n  MII  "  at  Winchester.  32. 

Dullness  of  Sir  Dudley  North,  188. 

Dullness  of  Waller,  166. 

Duns  Scotus,  28 

Dunstan,  St.,  the  scholar  of  Glastonbnry,  10. 

Education,  Central  Society  of,  established, 

146;    good   in    the  seventeenth    century, 

108  :  at  home,  39 ;  National  Board  of,  140  ; 

public,  Sir  T   Moore,  on,  63;    grant  by 

Parliament,  146. 

Edward  I  ,  scholars  in  his  reign,  28. 
Edward  II  ,  education  of,  27. 
Edward  III  ,  his  accomplishments,  28. 
Edward  IV.,  and  his  tutors.  50. 
Edward  V.  in  Ludlow  (  astle,  52. 
Edward  VI  ,  boyhood  and  learning  of,  65  : 

founds  Christ's  Hospital,  68  ;  his  journal, 

66  ;  his  tutors,  52. 
Edward's,  King.  Schools,  72. 
Edward  the  Black  Prince,  scholarship  of,  30. 
"  Eikon  Basilike,"  authorship  of,  106 
Eldon,  Lord,  and  Dr.  Johnson,  at  Oxford, 

238. 
Eldon,  Lord,  at  Newcastle  and  Oxford,  236, 

238. 

Eldon  School,  at  Vauxhall,  238. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  education  of,  76 ;  founds 

Westminster  School,  82  ;  statesmen,  poets, 

and  dramatists  of  her  reign,  88. 
English   language,   formation   of   the,  12  ; 

settlement  of,  26 
English,  sound  writing  in  the  17th  century, 

126. 

Essays,  Lord  Bacon's,  116 
Eton  College,  building  of,  44;  founded  by 

Henry  VI.,  42;  completed  by  Henry  VII., 

44  :  expenses,  early,  at,  45. 
Eton  Montem,  45 
Etonians,  eminent.  46. 
Evel.vn,  John,  at  ttotton,  Eton,  and  Oxford, 

173;  memoirs  and  diary,  174. 
Evelyn,  Mrs.,  128. 

Falkland,  Lord,  his  charncter,  170. 

Female  education  in  1371,  40  ;    school  of 

More,  62. 
Ferguson,  James,  tearhes  himself  the  classic! 

and  astronomy,  212 
Ferguson,  Robert,  at  Newington,  124. 
Flogging  in  schools,  81. 
Foot-ball  at  Rugby.  92. 
Free  schools,  rise  of,  126. 
French  in  the  age  of  Chancer,  30 
Fuller,    Thomas,    his    memory.    102;    his 

"Schoolmaster,"  102. 

Games  at  Harrow  School,  94. 

Gay,  John,  at  Barnstaple,  202. 

Gay,  Swift,  and  Pope,  their  friendship, 
202 

George  I   nnd  George  II.,  reigns  of,  134. 

George  III.,  education  of,    35 

George  IV.,  education  of,  144  ;  hb  patron 
age  of  literature,  145. 


General  Index. 


807 


Gibbon  at  Kingston,  Westminster,  and  Ox 
ford,  22;),  230 

GilTord,  William,  scholar  and  critic,  239. 

Glastonbury  scholars   10 

Gloucester,  Sunday  Schools  first  founded 
at,  138. 

Goodman,  Dean,  and  Dr.  Andrews,  West 
minster  masters,  82. 

"  Goody  Two  Shots,"  authorship  of,  271. 

Gower,  the  poet,  and  Hichard  II  ,  85. 

Grammar  School,  the  first,  48  ;  of  the  17th 
century,  115. 

Grammarian  and  poet  laureate,  an  eminent 
one,  59. 

Gray  at  Eton  and  Cambridge,  215  ;  ode  on 
Eton  College,  2  6, 

Gray  and  ^est's  letters,  215,  26. 

Gresham  College  founded,  88. 

Grey,  Lady  Jane,  and  her  schoolmaster, 
Roger  Afcham,  78. 

Guuter's  Scale,  1  8. 

Ilale,  Sir  Matthew,  a*:  Oxford  and  Lincoln's- 

inn,    70  ;  his  plan  of  instruction,  109. 
Ilalstead,  Miss,  her  lives  of  Uichard  III.  and 

Margaret  Beaufort,  58,  59 
Hastings,  Warren,  at  Westminster,  228,  229. 
Harrovians,  eminent,  95. 
Harrow  school  buildings,  94, 95  ;  foundation 

of,  93. 
Harper,  Sir  W  ,  and  the  Bedford  Grammar 

School,  75. 

Harvey,  Dr.  William,  education  of,  90. 
Havelock,  Sir  Henry,  at  the  Charter-house 

School,  104 

Henry  I.,  education  of,  18. 
Henry  II.,  his  love  of  letter?,  19. 
Henry  III.,  education  of,  26 
Henry  IV.,  his  accomplishments,  38. 
Henry  V.  at  Queen's  College,   Oxford,  3G ; 

his  college  associates,  38. 
Henry  VI.,  childhood  and  youth  of,  41 ;  his 

education,  42. 
Henry  VII.,  troubled  boyhood  of,  56 ;  was 

he  an  Etonian  1  58 
Henry  VIII  ,  early  life  and  character  of,  60  ; 

education  and  accomplishments  ot,  61. 
Henry,   Prince,  education  of,  87 ;  house  of, 

in    Fleet-street.    98 ;     his    patronage    of 

learned  men,  99. 

Henry,  Philip,  at  Westminster,  182. 
Herbert,  Lord,  in  Shropshire,  165  ;  his  plan 

of  education,  1  8 
Highgate  Grammar  School,  127- 
Hill,  Lord,  his  affectionate  disposition,  267 ; 

at  Chester,  268  ;  at  Waterloo,  269. 
Holbein's  Charter  Picture  at  Christ's  Hospi 
tal,  69 
Hooker,  Hichard,  at  lleavitree  and  Oxford, 

157,    68. 
Hornbook  of  the  18th  century,  143  ;  history 

of  the,  140. 

Horrocks,  the  astronomer,  119. 
Hunter,  John,  want  of  education,  222. 
Hutchinson,  Mrs.,  126. 
Hymns,  Morning  and  Evening,  by  Bishop 

Ken,  187  ;  Dr.  Watts's,  198. 

Ingulphus  at  Westminster,  17. 

James  I.,  education  of,  95 ,  literature  of  his 
reign,  t>9. 


James  I.  of  Scotland,  musical  education  of, 

39. 
James  IT.,  boyhood  and  education  of,  124  ; 

his  governor,  124. 
John  of  Salisbury,  19. 
John,  troubled  reign  of,  25. 
Johnson,   Dr.,    and    George  III.,  133;    at 

Lichfield,  Stourbridge,   and  Oxford,  207, 

208,  209,  210;  memorials  of  Johnson  at 

Lichfield,  21  i. 
Jones,  Sir  William,  at  Harrow  and  Oxford, 

232,  233  ;  his  plan  of  study,  234. 
Jonson,  Ben,  education  of,  90 
Judd,  Sir  A.,  at  Tunbridge  School,  74. 

Ken,  Bishop,  at  Winchester,  185 ;  at  Oxford, 

186;   his  Morning  and  Evening  Hymns, 

187. 
King's    College,    Cambridge,    founded    by 

Henry  VI  .  46. 
King's  College  and  School,  London,  founded, 

145. 

Ladies,  learned  English,  79  ;  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.,  108. 

Lamb,  Charles,  at  Christ's  Hospital,  274. 

Lanfrauc,  his  schools,  16. 

Latinier,  boyhood  of,  64. 

Latin  idiom  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  99. 

Latinity  in  the    2th  century,  20. 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas's  precocity,  254. 

"  Learning  is  better  than  house  and  land,"  9. 

Lectures  at  Gresham  College,  88. 

Letter?,  e^ry  English,  38. 

.  ibrary,  the  King's,  in  the  British  Museum, 
137. 

Library  of  Richard  of  Bury,  37. 

Lichfield  Free  Grammar-school,  78. 

Literary  Fund,  the,  founded,  145. 

Literature  of  the    7th  century,  125. 

Locke  at  Westminster  and  Oxford,  114; 
education  of,  114;  his  system  of  educa 
tion,  113;  his  "Thoughts  on  Education," 
115  ;  on  the  Understanding,  114. 

Logarithms,  invention  of,    17. 

London  University  College  and  School 
founded.  145. 

Lovell,  Lord,  and  Richard  III.,  56. 

Ludlow  <  astle,  Edward  IV.  and  V.  in,  50, 
50  ;  Milton  and  Butler  at.  50 

Lyon,  John,  the  founder  of  Harrow  School, 
93. 

Macaulay,  Lord,   his    account   of   Warren 

Hastings,  2i8,  229 
"Manners  makyth  Man,"  149. 
Mansfield,  Lord,  at  Westminster,  206. 
Manuscript  books,  costliness  of,  51. 
Marlborough,    the   Great  Duke  of,   at   St. 

Paul's  School,  194. 
Marvell  at  Hull  and  Cambridge.  175. 
Mary,  Queen,  her  infancy  and  childhood,  75. 
Mary,  wife  of  William  III.,  131. 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  education  of,  76. 
Mathematical  boys  at  Christ's  Hospital,  71, 

122. 
Merchant    Taylors'     School    founded,    86; 

scholars,  eminent,  87. 

Milner,  the  brothers  Joseph  and  Isaac,  238. 
Milton,  education  of,  111 ;  his  love  of  letters, 

112  ;  his  system  of  education,  112,  113. 
Monastic  schools,  7th  century,  5. 


308 


General  Index. 


Monitorial  system  of  Bell  and  Lancaster,  139. 
Monks,  the  transcribers  and  illuminators  of 

MSS.,  12. 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  boyhood  and  rise  of,  161 ; 

at  Oxford,  152  ;   school  of,  62. 
3Iornington,  Lord,  his  musical  taste,  250. 
Morton,  Cardinal,  and  Sir  T.  More,  151. 
Musical  education,  early,  40. 

Napier's  Bones,  or  Rods,  118. 

XH>..n,  Lord,  his  schools  in  Norfolk,  240 ; 
he  first  goes  to  sea,  2*2. 

Newcastle,  the  Duchess  of.  126. 

News,  letter  of,  1701-10,  111. 

Newspapers,  their  educational  aid,  111  :  in 
troduced,  110. 

Newton's  birthplace,  190  ;  at  Grantham  and 
Cambridge,  91,  192. 

Nobility,  ill-educated,  61. 

Nonconformist  schools  at  Islington  andNew- 
ington  Green,  123 

Norman  French,  26. 

"  Novum  Organuni  "  of  Lord  Bacon,  117. 

North,  Sir  Dudley,  his  adventures,  189. 

11  Old  Phlos  "  at  the  Charr«-r-house,  104, 298. 
"  Opus  Ma  jus  "  of  Roger  Bacon,  27. 
Owen,  Dame,  her  free  schools,  127. 
Oxford  discipline,  rigid,  81  ;  poet  laureate 

at,  69;  the  sciences  at,  118  ;    University, 

rise  of,  23. 

Paley,  Archdeacon,  at  Giggleswick  and  Cam-  ' 
bridge,  230  ;  on  teaching.  231. 

Pancake  custom    on    ."hrov6    Tuesday,  at  . 
Westminster  School,  83. 

Parr,  Dr.,  at  Harrow  and  Cambridge.  2.°,4. 
235  ;  on  Tenderness  to  Animals,  235 

Paston,  Sir  John,  books  for,  67  ;  and  Kdward 
IV.,  55;  William,  at  Kton,  44. 

Paul's,  St..  School,  founded,  48. 

Paulines,  eminent.  50. 

Peacham's  "Complete  Gentleman,''  107- 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  at  Harrow.  288  ;  at  Oxford,  '. 
289 ;  in  Yorkshire,  288.    ' 

Penn.  William,  atChigwell  and  Oxford,  192.  | 

1'eter  of  Blois,  19. 

"  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  the,  177-179. 

Pitt,  Mr.,  boyhood  of.  252. 

Plays  at  Westminster  School,  86. 

"  Pons  Asinorum,"  27. 

Pope,  childhood  of,   199  ;    paraphrase,  by,  i 
201 ;   and  Prior,   133 ;   schools  and  self- 
tuition,  198,  .99,  20J  ;  in  Windsor  Forest,  ! 
200. 

Por-on  at   Happesburgh,  Eton,  and  Cam-  j 
bridge,  24H,  247.  24*5 :   his  classical  anno 
tations  and  emendations,  245  ;  ia  Essex- 
court,  Temple,  249 ;  his  habits  and  char 
acter,  249. 

Primer  and  Hornbook,  the.  140. 

Printing,  introduction  of,  53- 

Prior,  Matthew,  at  Westminster  and  Cam 
bridge,  195- 

Psalms  of  David,  paraphrased  by  Lord 
Bacon,  117. 


Raikes,  Robert,  founder  of  Sunday  Schools, 

Raleigh.  Sir  Walter,  education  of,  89. 
Recorde.  Uobert,  117. 
Reformation,  schools  before  the,  73. 


Revolution,  the,  schools  at  the  time  of,  127. 
Richard  I.,  the  poet  king,  22 
Richard  II.,  education  of,  35  ;  and  Gower,  35. 
Richard  III.,  childhood  and  education  of, 

64  ;  at  Middleham  <  astle,  56 
Ridley,  Bishop,  and  Edward  VI.,  68. 
Roman-British  School;',  3 
Roman  Education  in  England,  3. 
Roper,  Margaret,  More's  daughter,  63. 
Royal  Society  incorporated,  122. 
Royal  Society  of  Literature,  145. 
Rugby  gold  medal,  93;  school,  90. 
Rugbeians,  eminent,  93. 

Saxon  language,  the,  12. 

School,  the  Blue  Coat,  70  ;  Charter-house, 
founded.  102;  City  of  London,  47;  St. 
Clement's  (  harity,  130;  Eldon,  at  Vaux- 
hall,  238  ;  Eton  founded,  43  :  Grammar, 
the  first,  48;  Harrow,  founded,  93  ;  High- 
gate  Grammar.  127  ;  King's  College,  Lon 
don,  145;  Ladies'  Charity.  130;  Lan- 
franc's,  16;  London  University,  145; 
Mercers', 48  ;  Merchant  Taylors',  founded, 
86,  87  ;  Milton's,  112  ;  Sir  Thomas  More's, 
62;  Rugby  founded.  90:  Tennison's.  131  ; 
Westminster,  founded,  81 ;  Winchester, 
founded.  31. 

Schools  in  the  age-  of  Chaucer,  29 ;  Alfred's, 
7;  Anglo-Norman,  21;  Anglo-Saxon,  6; 
Canterbury,  6  ;  Church,  22  ;  in  churches, 
38;  Croyland  Abbey,  17;  Druid,  2;  Early 
British,  1 ;  Free  or  Charity,  rise  of,  126, 
127;  Glastonbury,  10  ;  Kensington  Gram 
mar.  121) ;  King  Edward's,  at  Birmingham, 
Lichfield,  Tunbridge,  and  Bedford,  72; 
Monastic.  5  ;  Nonconformist,  1'23  ;  Owen's 
Free,  1^7;  Parochial,  early,  38;  Roman 
British,  3;  in  the  17th  century,  115:  Sun 
day,  founded,  138  ;  Westminster,  129. 

'*  Schoolmaster,  the  Good,"  by  Fuller.  101. 

'•Schoolmaster,  the,  by  Ascham,  77,  18. 

Schoolmasters  of  the  uth  century.  175. 

Scientific  Treatises  first  in  English,  11". 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  his  academical  attain 
ments  265;  at  Bath  and  Edinburgh,  263; 
his  first  verses,  265 ;  sees  Robert  Burns, 
265;  and  Mr.  Jeffrey,  267;  his  lameness. 
262;  bis  love  of  reading.  266  :  his  poetry, 
267  ;  at  Sandy -knowe,  262,  263. 

Scriptorium  of  the  abbeys,  12. 

Scriveners  in  Chaucer's  time,  29. 

Selden,  John,  education  of,  101. 

Shakspeare,  education  of,  164  :  at  Stratford 
Grammar-school,  164;  a  militiaman.  165. 

Shenstone  at  Hales-Owen  and  Oxford,  213, 
214  ;  his  '-Schoolmistress,''  213. 

^herborne,  King's  School  at,  73. 

Sheriff,  I>awr  ,  founds  Rugby  School,  91. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  at  Shrewsbury  and  Ox 
ford,  89,  158 ;  portrait  of,  159,  160. 

Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
established,  132. 

Societv  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge 
established,  131,  132. 

South,  Dr.,  at  Westminster,  184,  185. 

Soutbey,  Robert,  his  autobiography,  271 ; 
his  first  books,  272 ;  at  Bristol  School,  272  ; 
and  Coleridge,  274 ;  at  Corston,  272;  his 
handwriting,  272  ;  his  love  of  Shakspc-are, 
272  ;  his  translation*,  273 ;  at  \\  <  .-uniustcr 
and  Oxford,  273. 


General  Index. 


309 


Sponger  at  Cambridge,  90,  157 
Sports  of  the  old  London  scholars,  19. 
Steam-engine,  Marquis  of  Worcester's,  123 ; 

James  Watt's  childhood,  283. 
Stephen,  education  of,  19. 
Stcphenson,  George,  his  clay  engines,  282 ; 

a  poor   "cow-boy,"   282;    at  his  engine, 

283  ;  his  first  lesson,  283  ;  his  locomotives, 

284  ;   at  a  night  school.  284  ;   his  safety- 
lamp,  284. 

Stone,  Edmund,  how  ho  taught  himself 
mathematics,  202. 

Stowell,  Lord,  236  ;  at  Oxford,  237. 

Sunday  Schools  established.  138. 

Suppings  in  public  during  Lent  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  70. 

Surrey,  Lord,  his  boyhood  and  accomplish 
ments,  153. 

Button,  Thomas,  founds  the  Charter-house, 
103. 

Swimming  in  the  Thames.  Sir  Dudley 
North's.  189. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  at  Cambridge,  172. 
Teunison's  Library  and  School,  131. 
Tenterden,  Lord,  Chief  Justice,  at  Canter 
bury  and  Oxford,  252. 
Testament,  Lady  Jane  Grey's,  79. 
Thomas  a  Bccket,  19. 
Trim,  Wellington's  school  at,  250. 
Truant  punished.  16th  century,  80. 
Tunbridge  Free  Grammar  School,  74. 
Tusser,  Thomas,  at  Eton,  173. 

University  education  in  Shakspeare's  time, 

165 ;  expenses  in  the  13th  century,  25. 
Universities,  rise  of,  23. 

Vcgetius,  the  Duke  of  Marlborough's  copy 

of,  194. 
Viuny  Bourne  at  Westminster,  227- 

Waller  at  Market  Wickham  and  Cambridge,  | 
166,  167 ;  his  dullness,  166  ;  in  Tarlia-  ' 
ment,  167. 

Wantage,  Alfred  born  at,  7 ;  Jubilee,  7. 

Warwick,  Earl  of,  and  Henry  VI  ,  41. 


Watt,  James,  sketch  of,  283. 

Watts,  Dr.  Isaac,  his  schools  and  educa 
tional  works,  198,  199. 

Wellesley,  the  Marquis,  at  Eton  and  Oxford, 
250  ;  his  classical  taste,  and  love  of  Eton, 
251. 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  his  "  Dispatches,"  259  j 
his  schoo  Is,  256 

Wesley,  John,  his  books  and  diary,  205  ;  at 
the  Charter-house  and  Oxford,  203 ;  founds 
Methodism.  205  ;  his  management  of  time, 
206. 

Wesleys  and  Wellesleys,  the,  203. 

Westminster  Abbey  School,  83. 

Westminster  College  founded.  81 ;  Hall  and 
Library,  85. 

Westminster  Scholar,  a  poor  one.  85. 

Westminster  School.  South  on,  184. 

Westminsters,  eminent,  84,  85. 

Westminster  Green,  Blue,  Grey,  and  Black 
Coat  Schools,  129. 

White,  Henry  Kirke,  at  Cambridge,  286; 
his  early'death,  286  ;  at  Nottingham,  285. 

"  Whole  Duty  of  Man,  the,"  121. 

Wickliffe  translates  the  Bible,  33. 

William  the  Conqueror,  educated,  15- 

William  II.,  education  of,  18. 

William  III  ,  education  of,  130. 

William  IV.,  education  of,  145. 

William  of  Wyktham,  early  fortunes  of, 
149  ;  founds  Winchester  College,  31. 

Winchester  College,  31;  school  in  Bishop 
Ken's  time,  185. 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  his  boyhood,  64. 

Wooll,  Dr.,  head-master  at  Kugby,  92. 

Woolsthorpe  manor-house,  the  birthplace  of 
Newton,  191. 

Wren,  Sir  Christopher,  his  scientific  attain 
ments,  183;  at  Westminster  and  Oxford, 
182. 

Wright,  Thomas,  M.  A.,  on  the  English  lan 
guage,  14. 

Writing,  introduction  of,  3 ;  a  test  of  educa 
tion,  108. 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  his  education  and 
youth,  152. 

Wykehamists,  distinguished.  32,  38. 


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JUN  1  3  19W 

CIRCULATION  DE 

PTT~ 

FORM  NO.  DD6 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


248279 


